Catching Up

It's been awhile! Isabelle got her cast off finally on Halloween. She's doing awesome! She has a little brace we keep on her when she's really active but she gets to take it off for bed, bathing and eating. I actually really can't wait till it's completely off because she's learned to crawl! She's fast too. And she loves to see what's in the other room. Doesn't matter what the other room is. lol It is so amazing watching her learn so much so fast. I bet her brain is making new pathways like crazy!

In other news...Halloween went off without a hitch. Everyone had a costume and we went to daddy's work to trick or treat. We made it through the whole building in about 40 min, which is amazing compared to last years about an hour and a half for the same building. Unfortuneatly, most bowls were already empty (only 5pm!) so we didn't get as much as last year...but I'm ok with that. :D

So now it's November and I just can't believe it's already less than 2 months till Christmas! Today I used a pumpkin from Halloween (we had 6 sugar pumpkins and we didn't carve them because momma is lazy) and I made pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting. They are YUMMY! I also recently made a big batch of fresh raspberry jam which turned out Fantastic!

Oh and I got a job! I'm a ChaCha guide now! I did so good my first week I made top guide and now I get 20 cents a question. I've made over $100 so far, so I'm pretty happy! Tomorrow I'm going to get a bank account to hold all my earnings and hopefully I'll save it up for something good.

The sun is Shining!!

But WOW is it cold!! Last night it was SO COLD. I think there will be no more warm balmy days here anymore. Sun will be paired with brisk cold. Oh well, at least we have sweaters, and it sure is beautiful!

Halloween is coming. We're working on getting costumes for everyone and we're almost done. Isabelle will be a Pink Princess, Jade will be a Vampiress and I think Drake will be a Ninja. Still need to get one for Nicholas, but we do have his cow costume and Drake's old ninja costume we could use. I'm doubly excited for Halloween because we should get Isabelle's cast off.

Some very very nice friends of mine gave us some great clothes for the boys. Now I need to go take out at least an equal amount of their old clothes!!! I WILL declutter! We also got a HUGE bag of Rescue Heroes, so we'll purge some old toys too. Nicholas is building an army of Superheroes and Firemen I think. lol Hopefully he'll share one with Isabelle because I think she wants to play with him.

I can't believe it's already October 22. 3 more days till Isabelle's birthday and she turns ONE year old. Where did the last year go!? She finally started sitting up on her own and I think the cast actually helps her because it's so heavy, it helps hold her leg down. She's also trying so hard to crawl so I can't wait till it's off and we can catch her up on crawling.

Drake, he did SO good at his Tournament on Saturday. He placed 2nd and came home with a very cool silver medal. (Which he played with so much it broke off the ribbon. lol) I am SO proud of him, he went out there and he kept going till he got the point. It was his first tournament win, and his first tournament Ippon. :) His reward for getting up early and going there and doing his best is a Steak Dinner. (That's really what he wants!)So I think he'll get a date with Daddy to go have steak soon.

Gotta go to the post office today, I hope it's painless.

Pink!

I took Isabelle to get her cast checked out today and they did another xray. The bones are looking wonderful and she's dealing with the cast very well! They took off the ace bandage and put a pink cover over the cast. She looks pretty cute. :) I was thinking that it will match her Halloween costume (Pink Princess) but they told me she gets to have it off in TWO WEEKS! (Yay they origionally said 4-6 weeks!)Well it turns out that 2 weeks from today is Halloween so I guess it doesn't matter. haha

Tomorrow is Drake's Judo tournament. It's only his 3rd tournament so we're pretty excited. I really hope he gets a medal tomorrow I think it would make him SO happy and I think he'd improve in Judo if he did because of the esteem boost.

So tonight I'm going to make crock pot Chicken Noodle Veggie soup to bring with us. :) I think if it cooks till we have to get up (6am OUCH!) I can add the noodles then and it should be ready when we leave at 7. I love homemade soup!

And last, tonight I did my second Judo class! I did it last friday (then afterwards I took Isabelle to the hospital because of her leg) and then today was class #2. It was good, but a little hard for me to do. Not because of the workout, I can handle that but I'm the heaviest girl there and tonight I was paired with someone who's probably almost 100lbs less than me and I felt bad when she had to carry me around the mat! Eventually I said I couldn't go on and she had someone else work with her for the end. I was mostly worried because tomorrow is a major tournament that she's participating in and I don't want her to get hurt from carrying me around! Other than that, I had to do a bunch of pushups and situps. OMG I am OUT OF SHAPE!!! I can't do a situp more than just my shoulders. Pushups I had to do on my knees. And when we have to squat or kneel I feel like my thighs are going to burst into flames. LOL Well hopefully it'll get easier!

Sticks and Stones...

No name calling but we do have a broken bone! Friday afternoon baby Isabelle tried to fly off her changing table but gravity won out. I think she probably hit the shelf of the table when she fell down and hit it hard enough to break her right femur! She sure was upset when it happened!! But after about an hour she calmed down and we even managed to get her to sleep. We knew she wasn't feeling so well but since she wasn't crying anymore and even ate food and napped...we figure she'd be fine. So a few hours later when DH noticed she was crying when he moved her legs, we decided it was hospital time. They took the xrays, which was horrible. (Of course - she had a broken leg and it hurt when we stretched it out to xray!!) and did a CT scan to make sure her brain was ok from the fall. (It is OK!) When they figured out it was broken they sent us to Children's Hospital by ambulance to get her taken care of. Poor baby did NOT like that at all! She had to be strapped to a stretcher and all she wanted was momma to hold her. At Children's, they did another Xray and had to get an IV in her poor arms to give her medicine and just in case she would need surgery. It took SIX tries to get the IV in and by the last try she had pretty much given up and fell asleep through the pain. They gave her some morphine and after a 30 min nap she was awake and loopy. lol Next the Ortho put a big heavy cast on her leg. So by 3am we were finished and ready to go home. We had to take a cab back to the first hospital to get the car and were home by around 4am. She was LOOPY! She kept humming. lol So now, a few days later we're dealing with the big cast that cant' be wet, definitely can't be bumped and a baby who needs to be held a lot. She's worst at night I think her leg hurts from being dangly all day. Tylonal only does so much. We go back on Friday to make sure it's looking ok and then hopefully in 4-5 weeks she'll get it off. I would gladly take a broken leg to spare her!!

Day Number One.

October 9, 2008. It started before now but today will be officially day 1. My goal is to live more simply. Create a budget and stick to it, reduce clutter, eat better foods and help my family be strong and healthy.

In May, we started using cloth diapers. It's been a little bumpy getting to where we are now and since we've outgrown most of them we need to get more, but we are doing the best we can and our goal is to be 100% cloth by May next year. I will also start making clothes for the children in the hopes of saving money and hopefully creating items that look good and are well made.

I hope to have a garden in the spring which we can use for most of our veggies and herbs. I also would love to be able to can food, but that's more long term right now. I will keep making dinners and snacks from scratch and hope to be able to use whole foods with the money we're going be saving.

We will create a budget and stop all unnecessary spending.

If all goes well, we will be able to take a family vacation somewhere fun in 2 years!


***We have WAY too many clothes. Goal #1 will be to reduce the clothing to about half. We have already donated 5-6 big trash bags of clothes and I can see 4-5 more to go. Definitely way too many clothes! (Laundry here is rough!)