My Birthday

This weekend I celebrated my birthday and Mothers Day by having a what I'll affectionately refer to as a BC Day with my Hubby.

The day started off with us going out to breakfast -just the two of us- and then spending the rest of the day doing a few things we've longed to do alone, like walking up to lakes and enjoying the scenery without worrying about who might decide to take a dip in said lake. We went geocaching and I took photographs along the way. While we drove around in search of caches, we stopped when and where we felt like stopping and heard zero complaining from back seat drivers. It was glorious. It was fantastic! And it will be the first of many more "Me Time" 101 field trips.

Though I have to admit there are a few places I'd like to go back to for some more investigating on my own, I really can't wait to take the kids out to some of the cool photo ops learning about nature opportunities I found.
*BC = before children

Here are some of my favorite shots from the day:

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

Last night I felt frustrated and stupid while my attention was being torn between two things. I chose to abandon both because I could feel the tears coming and I didn’t understand why I was getting so emotional. I cried on my bed and felt defeated but needed to pull myself together. I went to the mirror and wiped my tears and looked up and saw your eyes instead of mine. Bright clear blue… and I knew you were there with me.

I miss you mom. I wish I could visit your grave or do something in your memory for Mothers Day. I can’t be at your grave but I hope you know and understand that my heart is full and with you today as I write these words for you.

Today I will give each of my kids an extra hug from you.

Today I will tell Amanda the story about the time you let me play hooky from school and took me to the mall instead, just because you wanted to spend time with me. I’ll tell her about how you always stood up for me, even though it was sometimes embarrassing.

Today I will show all the kids pictures of you and we’ll sing some of your favorite Primary songs.

Today I’ll hope you are looking down at us smiling and laughing and falling in love with Samantha’s big personality, Hayden’s silly sense of humor and Amanda’s growing gracefulness.

Today I’ll try not to cry so much and instead be grateful to have my sweet children who remind me of you in different ways everyday.

I love you, Mom. Happy Mothers Day!

Family Photo Night

We haven't taken a family picture in 2 1/2 years and let me tell you, it's no picnic taking the pictures yourself when you've got 3 active, impatient children! And then there's my poor, tired hubby who had to walk in the door after a hard days work and turn around and look handsome for pictures.

I got one decent* shot of us all together and then threw in that towel and pulled out the fun-time props!


*I use this term very loosely.


So much more fun, don't you think?

To Do and Ta Da!

To Do 4/14/2011:

1. about an hours worth of graphics for a project I am working on.

2. pack my kids up for an all day and overnight stay at a friends house

3. complete at least 5 loads of laundry - especially all the pukey towels from Samantha's journey through the stomach flu.

4. shop with 2 wild hyenas  kids for a nice pair of dress pants that actually *fit*... and maybe a top so I don't look like ghetto mama trash when I photograph a wedding tomorrow.

5. pick up photo props for wedding

6. prep and inventory for the wedding. 

7. NOT GET SICK. Seriously.

8. Take a shower. Really soon. sigh.

Ta Da!:

1. Threw all the kids into the van in record time this morning. Why? Because Amanda's bus driver was late AGAIN - on a FCAT testing day. No shoes on two kids, and no pants on one = no big deal... cause you should've seen my hair. No wait, you should NOT have seen my hair. Oh the shame.

2. Slept for 7 hours straight!

3. Samantha appears to be 100% back to normal! Yay!

12 of 12 Challenge - April

1. Grateful to have lights in my bathroom again! Just part of our slow and steady bathroom renovation.
2. The 3 basket laundry pile up... not to worry, there's one more out in the hall.
3. Gasp! Our bed is made! Amazing!
4. My business cards arrived today, just in time for my wedding shoot this weekend! Yay!
5. Amanda has egg frying skillz - we named this one Ying and Yang Yokes
6.Amanda is my biggest helper. She is buckling Sammy into her seat - we're on our way to the playground and then to pick up daddy at work!
7. playground condemned....grrr.
8. Stopped at Sam's Club to pick up food for the Boy Scout Training thing my hubby is Grub Master for... Sammy was soooo tired!
9. Found this cute suit at Sams! Didn't buy it though.
10. Hayden gets a few more minutes of playtime in before bedtime.
11. Amanda noticed this dew/rain drop on a leaf of  the tree out front. Click - ugghhh. totally blurry. :(
12. Poor Sammy Sue got really sick after her exciting trip to Sam's Club. Greasy pizza and super-sized Fanta orange soda probably didn't help. She was up all night barfing, so I kicked Hayden out of his bed so I could stay near her all night.

Linked up with another Amy G. here

Spring Break - part 2 - coming soon!

Okay, so I promise to make time to finish up a couple more posts about Spring Break... eventually. :)

I'm saving a spot for it right here.

Spring Break Didn't Break Me!

Best Spring Break EVER. 

My honey took off work for all of it plus one day... SWEET!

We begged Amanda to play hooky from school on Thursday so we could get a head start on all the festivities. And then we begged friends of ours to take their 4 boys out of school that day too and join us in our insubordinate behavior. gasp. I'm pretty sure that less than a millisecond lapsed between the begging and the agreeing to our absurd idea.

days 1-3:

Camping as a whole family for the first time ever. We arrived at Kelly Park a day before spring break started and thank goodness. The place got c.r.o.w.d.e.d. on the afternoon of day two.
The Casablanca kids and the Gove kids got along wonderfully. They kept disappearing together but we always knew where they were... I'll let you know how later on in this post.

We spent the first day setting up camp and then went for a walk to check out the spring. We didn't think it would be warm enough to swim in yet apparently we were wrong. After much begging by the children we agreed to come back the next day (at the warmest time of the day) and let them test out the waters.

All hands on deck! It took a village to set up this tent!

They all wanted to jump in SO BAD!

The only thing that would lure the kids away from the spring was the promise of time at the playground...

But the kids weren't the only one's having fun! Go Jocelyn!

Samantha spent most of camp with her shoes off. Most heard phrase at camp: "Sammy-Sue! Where's Your SHOES!??!?!"

That's one happy camper!

Daddy and Sammy hanging out together


On day two another family joined us for the afternoon.
We went on a hike around and through the park
and ended up at the spring again. 

Gluten-Free Layer Bars

So these are the gluten-free bars I made for game night last weekend.

Don't look much like bars, do they...

Though they did cut nicely into rectangles -sort of-,

they were extremely sticky and required much

licking of fingers.

I followed this recipe from allrecipes.com

with a couple of modifications based on some reviews.

click on the recipe to enlarge

So no peanuts and I added a Gluten-Free Ginger Snap crust.

I think next time I'll try pressing the ingredients
into the pan more to make it more dense.

Overall it was a super easy recipe that didn't
require any mixing and way easy to clean up.

and by the way, Reynold Wrap No-Stick Foil is totally 'da bomb'.

Would you try this recipe? 

Do you have any other super easy gluten-free desserts?

You would think it was summer already... or at least Spring Break. We've got a few more days till that starts around here, but don't tell Amanda or the rest of my little monkeys. Somehow chalk drawing on the sidewalk turned to chalk painting (mixing water with the chalk), and when that wasn't enough Amanda broke out the paint and a paint brush and started face painting.





 










Later on, and unfortunately not documenting in photographs, I sent them inside to put their swimsuits on while I cleaned up a little... I was ready and waiting with a hose to clean them off along with the sidewalk and driveway. This ended in them being much dirtier than they were to start with. Needless to say the first mud tracks of the season came through my front door and around the corner to the bathroom.

And I was only a teeny-tiny bit upset about it. :)

12 of 12 Challenge

1. Saturday morning tradition
2. Yard work
3. Keeping the little ones occupied during yard work
4. Picking Amanda up from a sleepover
5. Slurpee break
6. Someone must have stayed up mighty late at that sleepover (wink, wink)
7. My honey playing Civilization
8. We had camera shy friends over for dinner/games - this is what was left of Sammy's haystacks
9. Green cherries? who knew - great alternative for our red dye 40 sensitive boy though
10. One of the games we played
11. Where's Sammy? I see toes!
12. What was left at the end of the night of our super-sticky, 7-layer, gluten-free bars.

I'm linking up with a different Amy G  HERE

Post edit:

There really should be a pre-#1 picture of the first thing I did on the 12th, but I totally spaced about the challenge and didn't bring my camera. I spent an hour of the morning having breakfast with a friend... if I had taken a picture, it would've looked like this....Me: in a bright green oscar the grouch sweatshirt, Cathy in full on Grumpy attire, and the ever so pretty princess Garla, late to the ball we were having at Einsteins. :) It was a good day!