Valentines day...the rivalry continues.

I used to not make a big deal out of Valentines day. Then I had kids, and those kids started going to school. Suddenly Valentines day started to mean something. We have always made hand made Valentines for the kids to hand out at school.  Nothing overly fancy. Just something simple that the kids can do themselves. A few years back I decided that it would be fun if we made valentines to give to everyone in our immediate family. We made fancy Valentine pockets to put our valentines in. I made some home made valentines for the kids...daddy came home with helium balloons. And so the rivalry began.

This year when February hit the kids started asking me how I planned to out do dad this year. I told them that it wasn't worth trying, Dad is always going to be cooler than me. They agreed with that, and reminded me how last year all I got them were some Valentines pencils that I had picked up from our ward's Sweetheart Dinner the week before. Dad on the other hand bought them stuffed animals, chocolate and a gift certificate to Beaners to get their hair cut. In my defense I was 9 months pregnant and scheduled to be induced the very next day. I think I qualified for a year off.

While I played into there teasing and taunting, I secretly had a plan. I bought the girls some super sappy valentines cards and wrote super sappy messages about how proud I am of them and all that they are and all that they do, and how much I love them. Then I hid them among the Valentines that they would be handing out at school. I also spent the past few nights creating miniature stuffed animals. They turned out amazing!

I left them out on the kitchen table to be found in the morning. Daddy bought the big girls potted mini roses and chocolate. James got an angry bird pillow with chocolate and Ella a new super comfy blanket and pillow. 

The kids loved everything, and I think it's fair to say that I redeemed myself this year.

Going Shampoo-less

So the other day I saw a post of Facebook about not shampooing your hair. Instead you use Baking Soda as a wash and Apple Cider Vinegar as a conditioner (can't find the link for the life of me). I've read about this method before and thought about trying it, but I was a skeptic, and it sounded complicated...finding that perfect balance of baking soda and apple cider vinegar. At the time, I wasn't up for the challenge. But when I read this post the other day, it was so simple. Just put baking soda on your wet hair. Massage into scalp. Rinse. Put 1tbsp apple cider vinegar in a cup of water and poor over hair. Let sit for a minute or so. Rinse. Done.
 I haven't been happy with my hair for awhile now. I keep switching my shampoo, trying to find something that leaves my hair feeling soft and looking great, but just when I find one, a couple of weeks later, I'm right back to where I was before. I know some swear by salon grade shampoo, but I am just not willing to pay the prices. So when I saw this post I thought, what the heck, the next time I shower, I'll give it a try.
Now I generally only wash my hair every 4 or 5 days, keep that in mind. If you are use to washing your hair more frequently than this, you are likely to have a very different experience. I stepped into the shower, wet my hair, applied about 1/4 cup baking soda (I have A LOT of hair) massaged it in to the roots. Rinsed. Dipped the ends of my hair in the cup of water and apple cider vinegar and let soak for a bit and then dumped the remainder over my head, and let it sit while I finished washing the rest of me. Then I rinsed. I always let my hair dry naturally. I have dead straight hair that doesn't do anything but hang there and I am never in that big of a hurry to go somewhere that I need to have it dry right away. When my hair was completely dry, I was amazed! I can't remember the last time my hair felt this soft! I had read the warning about the "Transition Stage" and how you should be prepared for crappy hair for awhile, but that so isn't the case for me. It is a little more static-y than usual, so I plan on looking into what kind of solutions there are for that. But other than that, I am amazed. So far so good. I plan to keep at this. Imagine the savings!
In my searching for the post that inspired me to just do it, I came across this FB group called No Poo (no shampoo) & Low Poo Hair Care Group, which led me to this website, coderedhat.com. The website has tonnes of info about this method and other treatments to go along with it. So I'll file it away so that if I ever come across any problems, I can check back for what possible solutions there may be.

Flat Stanley's Canadian Adventure

We had a visitor arrive from across the seas today(Wednesday, January 22)!  Flat Stanley has come to us from Ireland! Sadly he arrived freezing cold as he was slightly under dressed for our freezing temperatures. We got to work right away making him some proper clothing. A winter jacket, snow pants, a toque, boots and mittens. Now he's ready to go out and play in the snow. Welcome to Milk River Alberta Canada!

We had to put pink snow pants on him, that's all we had, after all we are a house full of mostly girls.

Kathryn had a basketball game, so we thought Flat Stanley might like to come and watch. We all had a great time. Kathryn's team won 50-8.

On Thursday Flat Stanley went with Kymberly to school. He spent the day with her Grade 1 class learning all kinds of interesting things. The kids were excited to have a Flat Stanley visit because they had just finished reading one of his books. Mrs Takagi tells me that he was very well behaved and welcome to come again another day. 

Journaling to quiet the children and a 100 day challenge.

Oh yes, this is definitely going to be a new Sunday routine. It is so wonderfully quiet right now. The kids were just getting at each other and the decibels were rising quickly. So I called all the kids together and told them that we needed to start doing more "Sunday" like thing on Sunday. For instance, writing in their journals. So they all got out their journals and started writing. Oh how lovely. And since they are writing in theirs, I thought I'd better write in mine...or make a blog post as the case may be. I've actually been writing every day on my other blog...the blog that I don't tell any one about, the blog that I've kinda been keeping off and on for the past couple of years, the blog that is extremely personal and extremely hard to even admit that I have, the blog I'm not even sure I want anyone I actually know to read. But a blog that recently I've been thinking I need to share to really get the most out of it, and not knowing how best to share it. This blog is about my weight loss journey. If you are going to go over and visit it, start with this blog post.

Eleven days ago I started a new challenge, a 100 day Challenge. If you want all the details, I lay it out in this post. The idea is that I will follow my laid out exercise plan for 100 days and document it every day on my other blog. You can follow along if you want. For the most part, it isn't really exciting. There will be at times some really insightful posts, but mostly it is just a place for me to record my efforts each day, with the hope that at some point I'll see results.

Four days ago, I decided to add a new 100 day challenge to my life. My sis-in-law posted the following quote on Facebook the other day and it got me thinking...

I may have a problem.

I was so excited with idea of getting rid of baby things now that I feel certain that our family has reached its proper size. And for the most part I've been great at just getting rid of things when Ella no longer needs them. It's made especially easy when I have people that I know and care about that I can pass the stuff on to. However, I have come to realize that I may have attachment issues when it comes to baby clothes. In particular clothes that all 4 of my girls have worn. There are so many memories attached to each piece of clothing, memories for each of the girls. Memories that I may or may not be afraid will disappear if I don't have those clothes to remind me of them. And so every time I go through clothes that Ella has out grown, it takes forever. I have to talk myself into putting them into a give away box. And then there are some, that I just can't part with. The biggest culprit are things that I have created. I once posted about my obsession with fabric. It seems as though that obsession extends to the things that I create from that fabric. These things that I have made for my baby girls, I just can't put in a box to give away, they are far to precious. I might be OK if I gave them to a family member and then they always stayed in the family so that I could see my lovely nieces wearing clothes that I have created...but I'm not even sure that I am ready for that. I have this tote, it.s a fairly large tote, that I have designated as my baby keep sake box. I told myself that once it was full, I'd just have to give the rest away. Do you know how many dresses and things I have created over the past 11 years? Neither do I, but I know it's more than a few. The box is full, and Ella isn't yet one. I'm going to have to get another one...maybe just a temporary one, until the day comes that I can part with some of my obsessions.

A New Year Adventure

For New Years Daniel and I decided to do something different, something adventurous, something spontaneous. All we needed was someone to watch our kids. My sister was just crazy enough to say yes, even though she would also be watching my brothers four kids in addition to her own five. So at my sisters house for three days were 2 adults (my sis and her husband),  3 teenagers (ages; 17, 15, 13) and then eleven kids under the age of twelve(ages; 11,9,9,8,7,6,6,5,3,2,<1). I mention this only to illustrate that my sister is the real Super Woman. I shall also mention, that Ella cut two molars while staying with my sister....and she doesn't cut teeth gracefully.

Meanwhile, Daniel and I headed down to Greatfalls to catch a 10am flight on Dec 30th to Phoenix. When we arrived we were informed that our flight was canceled because the pilot had called in sick and was not rescheduled until 3:45pm on the following day. This was not going to work for us, as we were planning on going to the Coyotes VS Oilers hockey game on New Years Eve and coming back home on the afternoon of New Years Day. Lucky for us, there was a flight out of Missoula that night. All we needed to do was rent a car and drive across Montana two and a half hours to catch that flight. So instead of spending the afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona we spent an entire day in Montana.

Beautiful as it is, I have spent most of my life enjoying adventures in this part of the country and would have really rather been enjoying an adventure in a place I had never yet been. We did arrive in Phoenix late that night, on our way to the hotel, we took a detour and drove past the Mesa, Arizona Temple. I was looking forward to visiting it the following day.

A Courthouse Christmas

Every year I try to do something different for our Christmas Advent. This year we decided to do a random Act of  Christmas Kindness for each day of advent. I got the idea from TSJ Photography blog. However, I just realised that this post is just going to have to wait until Christmas Day. I would hate to spoil the fun for anybody that might be a recipient of our Random Acts of Christmas Kindness.  We live in a pretty tiny town and word spreads quickly. So although I am typing some of this post on a blizzardy December 2nd, it will just have to sit in Draft form until Christmas Day.

Here is a list of some of the Random Acts of Christmas Kindness that we did this year

Tape candy canes to random post office boxes and to ATM machines. We did this when ever it was too cold to do anything else.
Shovel somebodies sidewalk (we did this today, a very blizzardy day...twice...for the same neighbours, not sure if they will even notice a difference in the morning)

 Dec 5 -  Oh my Kymberly is so sweet. I've been pinned to the chair in the living room by two sick kids today. Both Ella and James have been sick and needing mom to hold them. Kathryn and Tansley had a church activity to go to this evening so all that was left was Kymberly and she was concerned about what we were going to do for our random act of kindness. I suggested that maybe we would just have to do double the next day. But she said that she could go out and shovel somebodies sidewalk. I told her it was kind of dark and cold, but that did not deter her. She got all bundled up and went out to shovel the neighbours sidewalk. She wasn't gone long, but she said that she had gone across the street and worked on the sidewalk. I told her she was awesome and that she had done a good job. It wasn't much, but it was what my darling 6 year old could offer, and that is good enough. Brings tears to a momma's eyes.

Kathryn dropped off a set of paper plates, cups, napkins and plastic cutlery with a note that said "Our Christmas wish to you is less dishes to do!" to the librarian one day after school. We dropped off the same gift to one of the post office ladies after she had commented to me that she was getting tired of the craziness of the Christmas rush.
Leave a treat on doorsteps around town we did this one many times, it was probably the kids favorite.
We went to Legacy Lodge where my Grandma Paxman is living and read Christmas stories to her. We had planned to invite others to come join us, but there wasn't anyone else around in the dining area to invite.
We left wrapping paper and Tape on vehicles with a note that read "You've been shopping since November, Barely sleeping, hardly stopping. Now it's late, you're in a scrape out of paper out of tape. Hope this wrap helps save the day! Have a Happy Holiday!"
On Christmas Eve we handed out roses at the Wal-mart in Lethbridge to random folks as we finished off a little bit of Christmas shopping.

We had so much fun with this Christmas Advent. It will be something we do again.

For Christmas Eve we went into Lethbridge to hang out with our Court Family. The Boys played street hockey complete with the singing of the National Anthem

We then ate lots of food and opened a few presents.

Each family had made a video to present. This was our video attempt,

 Complete chaos. Joseph refused to cooperate and the Angel became a little cranky. Other than that it went perfectly.

 Christmas day was spent at home. The kids slept in until 8am. It's funny. Every other day of the year I have kids waking up early, but with out fail, every Christmas they sleep in. I love them.

We opened gifts and then enjoyed our traditional Christmas breakfast of pancakes, bacon, sausages, eggs, eggnog, chocolate milk, orange juice, fruit and whip cream. The rest of the day was spent lazying about enjoying our new treasures. Oh, yes and a crazy google hangout call with all of my family including my baby brother serving a mission in Florida and my parents serving a mission in Ireland. Our computer is slow and stupid, so it was all kind of choppy on our end, but we were able to get the gist of it. Happy Day, we ordered a new computer for our Family Christmas gift!!  All in all, a perfect Christmas.