School and Stress

I have decided to go back to school and have been back part time for 2 years now. I just realized I still have 2 more years. Grr!! I wish I was done. This semiester I am taking 3 classes so that is better than just part time, but with having two jobs, the paper route, a calling at church that takes up Wednesday nights AND 4 kids... I am feeling a little overwelmed. I have been blessed with great kids who do a ton of babysitting for me so that makes things a lot easier. I am taking a family fiance class, natural disaster and math 1050. To tell you the truth the most stressful of them all is the finance class. I am going a little crazy and hyperventalating over how much money I should have saved by now to be able to retire. Retire!?! I haven't even begun to work yet and I am supposed to have tens of thousands of dollars saved by now. I have a total of maybe 5 in the account right now. GRR!! Hopefully someday...


OK. Enough of the pity party. I need to get back to homework. Someday I will be smarter than a 1st grader!

72 hour kit!

I am taking a Natural Disasters class is semester and as one of the assignments I had to make a list of what I would put into a 72 hour kit. Well, once I get a bee in my bonnet I sometimes can’t let go. (Just ask my hubby all the things I have him do on short notice.) So I of course go to my favoritest web site, pinterest and start looking up 72 hour kits. I found one that I really liked here. She put her kits into milk jugs so they would be easy to grab and go, leaving room in the backpacks for the clothes and blankets and other fun things. I used my own list of food though. I put things in it that my family would actually eat!!

1. Day one:
1. Breakfast: mini box of cereal (since no one eats it with milk this works!)
2. Lunch: cup of soup
3. Dinner: Chef Boyardee mini ravioli
4. Snack: cookiea

2.     Day two:

1.     Breakfast: 2 granola bars

2.     Lunch: fruit strip and pudding cup

3.     Dinner: ramen noodles

4.     Snacks: crackers and cheese

3.     Day three:

1.     Breakfast: cookies and raisins

2.     Lunch: Lipton chicken noodle packet

3.     Dinner: ramen noodles

4.     Snacks: fruit roll ups

5.     Hot cocoa

We cut the clean milk jug as per the instructions and instead of printing off the list I just wrote them on. Saves paper, just not my wrist. It took about 30 minutes to do this and only minor fighting about eating the fruit snacks now. Robert wants to try living off of what is in the jugs, but I told him next March when we will exchange it out. We plan on doing it over conference next Spring and then next Fall. I might wait on the fall one till after Halloween so we can put all those hard candies in it.    

 

Donnovan's 4th Birthday! My baby turned four and he wanted a Car's themed Birthday. We kind of threw his birthday party together last minute (ok so the night before isn't exactly last minute but close enough). We bought cupcakes from Macey's, and I had seen on pinterest here where she used donuts to look like tires. I decided to then place the cupcakes around a pizza pan and put the "tires" in the middle. It turned out super cute!

 Dad hung streamers from the ceiling in the kitchen and we took down the boys' curtains in their room and used them as a table runner.

 We also stole from the boys' room the signs and all the Cars toys. The picture isn't that great because the signs reflected the light. Someday I will take a class and learn how to take great pictures. Until then, please forgive me.

                                        Here's the mantle with more signs and more Cars.

 We had the fourth of July Banners still up, but I thought they kinda went with the whole Cars theme. You know like the flags at the race tracks.

Ryan and cousin Trevor

Here is the Birthday Boy Blowing out the Candles!!!

 Activities for the party were as follows:
      1. Color Lightening McQueen or Mater coloring page.
      2. Cars bean bag toss (we threw bean bags into a Cars garbage can which we got from Aunt Mert)
      3. Cars Secret Agent Mission (treasure hunt)
      4. Pin the lightening bolt on Lightening McQueen
      5. Cars race (used Donnovan's Halloween Costume and had the kids race between orange cones)
      6. Treasure Ball ( go this idea from a lady at church. She rolled up in streamers a bunch of different toys and had the kids take turn unrolling to get their prizes.)

Favors we gave were: McQueen tops, kaleidoscopes, mini cars, and bouncy balls on strings. We also had a piniata filled with fruit snacks and Cars candy. We gave out Bubbles that we had written Rusteze Car Wash. They also for the treasure hunt found Cars Sour Spray with a charm (found them at Easter and knew I would need them someday).

 We had invited our new Neighbors, Christopher, Aria, and Aaron and our cousin Trevor.

 Donnovan got a bunch of toys including: a Cars mat with Lightening McQueen.

Christopher, Aria and Aaron gave Donnovan a 24 piece set of Playdoh!!

                                                                                                   Trevor gave him a Car's puzzle mat!

Kiersten gave him a Mater Car.

Emalee gave him some puzzles!

Ryan gave him some Car's Friends to play on his new mat!

 And Mom and Dad won by giving him a fire engine Robot! Well he seemed the most excited about it. Although he plays with all of his presents.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DONNOVAN!!!

Beastly Bush!

We have this wild rose bush that grows on the corner of our house. We have to cut it back all the time and when we don't it grows huge and wild..hence the name wild rose bush huh?! We bought a cheap $10 trellis from Walmart, but the beast of a bush knocked it down. We knew then that we needed a stronger, more durable trellis.

We looked at them, but I was not about to pay $50 dollars for one. We had a broken screen door that was just sitting there and one day I actually "looked" at it and noticed that the wrought iron decorative piece would be a great trellis.

Soo with the help of my awesome hubby we dug two holes and placed two pressure treated 4x4's in the ground and cemented them in. Then we just drilled the decorative piece right on the wood. Total cost: $20. Total time: 3 hours. 

Take that beastly bush!!!

Square Foot Garden!

I wanted to show you all my square foot garden. You see those ones out there made out of wood, but I wanted to be different. I needed  a garden box where I don't have to bend over cause, well, I don't want to hurt my back and plus I am way too big to get down on my knees. So I thought and thought and finally it came to me.... a garage door! One panel of garage door hit me at the knee..  yes, I am that short! 

before...

After!

We had a 16 foot door panel that we cut into fourths. My wonderful hubby also cut a pressure treated 4x4 into fourths also. We then drilled the door onto the 4x4's leaving about 6 inches of the 4x4 out of the bottom. Then we dug wholes in the yard where we wanted to put the garden, put the 4x4's in the whole and then filled the garden half way up with dirt.
 We have 2 huge mounds of dirt in the backyard so finding dirt was easy peasy. We filled the rest of it up with garden grow planting soil and then planted our tomatoes and cumcumbers!
Now we just need to find a few more garage doors for the rest of my veggies!

Angry birds

So I have found this Evil site...Pinterest. And when I say evil I mean "the best website who loves to suck me in and not let me out for hours". While on it the other day I came across this pin about Angry birds and knew that my kids would love it. So I went down to the dollar store and bought red, yellow, blue and green balls. I decided to glue felt on to them with hot glue, but it didn't stick.

SO I tired E6000. It looks like it might stick!!

Now we are collecting boxes so we can try out our angry birds. I can't wait! We might even use them for Young Women's.

Emalee's Birthday Part 2

SOoo I know its been like a month but I needed to finish putting up Emalee's birthday. She had a great time. We first colored pictures, then we made lanterns, pascals, played pin the nose on Flynn Rider, Ate ice cream and cupcakes, played on the slide and untanlgled outside, opened presents, castle pinata, and then just played. weww!! We were tired!!!

Kiersten starring at the cupcakes Aunt Katie made! They are multi colored yellow, pink and purple.

 sliding outside.

playing with pascal. This is Donnovan's favorite part of the movie. Where Pascal sticks his tongue in Flynns ear.

Made a castle out of a oatmeal box and then cut a hole in the bottom. I then taped one string to the trap door and then put about 30 more sticking out the bottom. Then one by one they pulled on a string to see which one opened the castle's trap door. We had Rapunzel fruit snacks as the candy.

 Birthday girl loving her cupcake! She ate like 3 of them!!

 Here are all the things that we gave the kids. They made the lanterns and the Pascals. They had a treasure hunt for the bags of candy, the fruit snacks came out of the castle and then she gave each kid a frying pan!! It was soo cute. She had a great time. She's already planning next years party.