County Fair

The first weekend in August, Cowley County has their annual county fair. This year, we didn't realize the date, so the first night of the fair, Claire was off visiting Chase's parents for the weekend. The first night, Chase, one of his friends, Roo & I headed out after the guys got off of work. We walked, ate way too much, had fun crowd watching & Roo & I cheered on the guys while they attempted to win something from the games on the midway.

Carter was such a trooper while we were out there, taking in the sights & sounds. Around 9:30, he started to get cranky, as it was an hour after his bedtime. I snugged him up in his Moby & tried to get him fall asleep. I covered his head, gave him his favorite lovey & paced the midway, trying to soothe him.

Monday, the kids & I stopped at Wal-Mart to run in & get some stuff before naptime. As I was trying to get the kids from the car to the basket, a man was getting out of his car next to us. When he saw me, he got this look of shock on his face & asked if I lived here in town. He then asked if I'd been at the fair, carrying a baby. When I said yes, he said "I took your picture at the fair. I just assumed you were from out of town because I'd never seen you before. I've had your picture on display with my exhibit at the coffee shop. I hope you don't mind. I'd be happy to take it down if you'd like." I told him that, no, I didn't mind at all & that I'd be headed out there to see it soon.

Chase & I took the kids there for lunch yesterday. The picture was up with a whole collection of others taken during the fair. Chase liked the picture so much he bought it before we left. It's now hanging in our dining room with some of our other treasures & it makes me smile each time I walk by.

All photo credit goes to Ron Shufflebarger of Winfield. He can be found here and here.

Wordful Wednesday

The girl's got a wicked sense of style. This was what she wanted to wear to the fair on Sunday night. In case you can't tell? It's her Abby "Dabby" birthday outfit, paired with neon blue legwarmers with multi-colored stars & pink Hello Kitty rainboots. Nevermind the fact that it was 95 degrees out.



And this little squeezable ball of goo is going to be one in 37 days. Those chubby little cheeks & big blue eyes melt my heart all over again every single day.

I still don't like her.

Pioneer Woman, that is.

Since Chase has decided he's in a food rut, I put on my big girl panties & headed over to her website to dig through her recipes. I figured since it was for Chase, I could ignore everything about her that annoys me & just go straight for the food.

{A small side note: My husband thinks he's in a food rut now? Perhaps he'd like to keep complaining about it & then I'll show him what a real "rut" is when he's forced to eat PB&J for days on end, while my apron hangs in the pantry, nice & clean.}


Now. Were where we? Oh yes. The recipes I stole from PW & slightly modified. Steak bites & crash-hot potatoes. Along with sauteed zucchini & homemade potato bread.


And Chase promptly apologized for ever using the word rut. My secret? Butter. And lots of it.

Now, if PW could just quit babbling & get to the fracking point, she'd be goodtolerable.


In other boringly domestic news, I've been dinking around with my laundry detergent "recipe". We have a farmer's market here every weekend & one of the vendors sells handmade soaps. On a whim I decided to pick up a few bars from her "reject" pile to try out in my upcoming batch of soap & let me tell you. Spending the extra money on the soap was worth it.

The detergent smells uhhhh-may-zing. The soap isn't overly scented but just enough so that I didn't put any essential oil in. Perhaps it's just my imagination (although we all know I'm pretending it isn't) but I think the kids' skin has cleared up even more.

I also found that I like my detergent with a little more Borax than the original recipe called for. I usually do about a 2:1 ratio rather than a 1:1. Since it's a booster & a whitener, I've been able completely cut out OxiClean. You can also make a little paste with it & apply directly to spots before washing, which has eliminated the need for any kind of spot treatment products.

I played around with the amount of detergent I used in each wash, too, after reading a recipe on another blogger's site. When I started out using my homemade detergent, I was using only 2Tbs (or 1/8C) per load, as recommended by the original recipe I'd found. Her variation called for 1/4C if you had hard water. I've found that if I toss in a really dirty load of clothes (or Chase's clothes after a softball game) & use 1/4C of soap, the clothes come out clean & fresh smelling & don't require an extra wash like they sometimes did in the past, with commercial detergent.

So there you have it. Things have been so exciting around here lately I've been reduced to posting pictures of what I eat & debating the merits of an 1/8C of laundry detergent vs. a 1/4C.

I'm sorry.

(also? WTH Blogger. I've tried to adjust my font size about 09283 times & you still won't save my changes. Wench.)

Someone thinks I'm doing something right!

The lovely Kyooty over at Kyooty Center has decided I'm a pretty good momma & sent me an award for it!

Thanks, Kyooty, for my first award!

I do love my little beastlets. Some rare pics of me with the terrible twosome :)

Momma & my precious TWO YEAR OLD! Happy birthday, sweet Bear. I love you more than I ever thought I could love someone & you are the sunshine of my day. You drag me out of bed way too early every morning, keep me laughing all day long, & send me crashing into bed every night. And I wouldn't have it any other way.


Momma & sweet little Roo baby. My little surprise, you continue to do just that every single day. You keep me on my toes, whether it be from crawling over to the table & getting stuck underneath it, pulling up on something & panicking when you can't get down, or trying to mimick what Bear is doing & getting hurt because you suffer from "little dog" syndrome. Don't rush, little man...one day, too soon, you will be a big boy, mobile & running all over the place, no longer my little booger butt.

Why I love my tile floors

Alternative title:

Who would like to come teach my children proper table etiquette?

I do believe I've mentioned in the past the hideous, completely pointless, completely horrid white carpet that was in our rent house? I may have failed to mention that this carpet extended into the dining room.

Sure, I hated that carpet. Hated it in the rest of the house. I totally, utterly, completely detested having carpet underneath my dining room table. That would be a common-sense FAIL right there.

The ridiculous carpet necessitated a sheet being kept underneath Bear's highchair at all times. And that sheet? Had to be washed pretty much daily because, well, she wasis a slob.

Which leads me to my love of my tile floors in the dining room & kitchen. Bear's still a total slob & Roo's just starting to get the hang of eating something that doesn't look like pureed dog doo, so he's lucky if he gets 50% of the food into his mouth.

It usually works like this:

• 7:00am: Start out the day with beautiful shining floors, clean table, clean highchairs.
  
• 9:00am: Feeding time at the zoo has begun.
  
• 9:15am: Step on some puffs, curse because it is totally smushed into my foot & I actually have to scrape it off.
  
• 9:20am: One of the beastlets has decided they are done eating, so whatever food is left on their plate is dumped.
  
• 9:21am: Take a peek at the floor, think Bear actually did a decent job of eating & that there isn't much food under her chair. Take a peek under Roo's highchair, wonder why I bother to put food on his plate at all. He'd be happier if I scattered it across the floor a la Hansel & Gretel & set him free to act as a human vacuum.
  
• 9:22am: Get kids down from table. Depending on what was served for breakfast, either herd them into the tub or herd them into the playroom.
  
• 9:23am: Walk out of kitchen & leave the mess on the floor.
  
• 11:45am: Repeat scene from breakfast. Except now it's lunch, so the food is a little messier.
  
• 12:15pm: Again repeat scene from breakfast. Remove beastlets from chairs, decide between bath or diaper/clothing changes & naptime wind down.
  
• 12:45pm: Beastlets are in bed. Whip out the trusty broom, dustpan & mop. Proceed to clean up approximately 2/3 of all food I painstakingly unwrapped prepared for the terrors.
  
• 3:30pm: Snacktime. Why did I bother sweeping & mopping?
  
• 7:45pm: Dinner. Repeat food scene played out through entire day.
  

So there you have it. I'm lazy. I don't sweep and/or mop after every feeding. If I did, my schedule would look like this: Feed, sweep, mop. Repeat 4x.

But it can't be that bad you might be saying to yourself. Ha! would be my reply. Still don't believe me? Here's photographic evidence. This is from breakfast & lunch today.

Here it is, still all spread out:


And here is the massive pile once it's been swept up:


I know...you're just totally clamoring to come eat with me & my kids. Right?

Seriously though. Those pictures? Proof of why, when we go out to eat, we tip based off of how big of a mess the kids made. Your service sucked balls? If they made a mess like the one above, you're still getting $10.

Wordless Wednesday-Mmm...Oreos

The many faces of Roo...

{Mostly} Wordless Wednesday

"Well hello there, Ladies. Care to join me?"

Wordless Wednesday...Butt Paste

Upon discovering that pesky baby acne, Bear turned to the cream that had thus far solved all of her skin blemishes...

I wonder what they were talking about?

"Hey, Roo...I got something to tell ya!"

"Say whaaaaat? Bear-that's crazy talk!"

"I know, right? Shh. We better not let Momma hear us."