Simple Woman's Daybook

I'm trying something new I found a few weeks ago and really liked today :)

Simple Woman's Daybook

Micki's Daybook
March 23, 2010


Outside my window...It was a gorgeous day, I love days like today.

I am thinking....I need to work hard for myself.

I am thankful ...that my children are all healthy and happy for the moment :)

I am wearing...my favorite jeans, and a hot pink tank top

I am remembering...The people who make me feel loved.

I am creating... a dress for my almost 5 year old niece.

I am going...to start over tomorrow

I am reading...Everyone Can Be Your Friend, by Sue Schott, actually I am being read TO by PD :)

I am hoping/praying...that things will not be as hard as I'm anticipating them to be.

On my mind...What life has in store.

From the learning rooms...Z finished all of his homework staying after school today, that extra hour does him WONDERS!!! L is working hard on her writting skills and finishing up her Thank You's for her birthday. PD is doing fantastic reading!

Pondering these words ..."Let Go Let Go Let Go"

From the kitchen...the smell of grilled cheese and tomato soup still lingers from dinner

Around the house...laundry is almost caughtup!

One of my favorite things...feeling the fresh air blowing in through my window.


From my picture journal...

I did not take any pictures today, I was too busy out enjoying the day :) So here is a favorite from this past weekend :)

Hope you enjoyed my very first Simple Woman's Daybook entry!

Spring is In the Air!

We've had some pretty wild weather this week, St Patrick's Day was beautiful, Thursday was absolutely GORGEOUS, Friday there was a chill in the air, and Saturday the sun made its way back out and fooled me into thinking it was warm... until I stepped outside..brrrrrr...

After school on Thursday we hopped in the car and headed down to Sibley park, We met up with friends for pictures,

After pictures we played at the park for a while, mostly on the swings :)

On Saturday, I was excited that we could sleep in... no alarms were set, yet the kids thought 8am was time to be up and going... PD was all excited to hit up the thrift stores for craft supplies, I noticed the gorgeous sunshining through my window, threw on spring clothes got out the door and thought BRRRRRR it sure does look alot warmer than it is, I'm sure it will warm up. Before we headed out of town I wanted to go check out the bridge that is closed because of the extreemly high water in the Minnesota River.


We also stopped by one of our favorite places, 7 mile creek to check out the flooding their, it is all under water :(

if you look closesly you can see the tops of the swingset and the roof of the pavillion peaking out above the water.
We got a few things to put together this week for Crafts ;) I can hardly wait, and then we went to the park for a short while, the boys rode their bikes and us girls drove, good thing because Miss L was not in the best of moods, and it was cold... too cold to be playing at the park, and DEFINETLLY too cold to be out in t-shirts and capri's like the two little girls that were there playing... bright red :( So we played fast and headed home for some hot cocoa, Miss L's mood did not improve so we decided to cuddle up for a nap, and the boys went outside to play with their friends :)
It was a fantastic day, despite the cold!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

I was a bit worried that Mr Sunshine had not received my facebook status requesting his friendship so we could get to know eachother better, when I woke up and went outside to find my car covered in this,

Although, very pretty, cold and icy were not what I was hoping for!

LUCKILY, Mr Sunshine was not about to miss out on all the fun St Patrick's Day events in these parts ;) It turned out to be a super GREEN day at our house, I started the day packing the boys lunch, all green for my guys!

Green Tuna wraps for the main course. PD's favorite recipe (created by Chef PD himself)

One can of Tuna, drained

a "glob" of Tostitos Creamy Spinach Dip

mix it up, spread it on a Spinach tortilla shell sprinkle with shredded cheddar roll it up and chow.
Also packed inside their GREEN lunches they found a smallish GREEN hat filled with GREEN grapes, a tiny package of GREEN (gold)fish, GREEN strawberry/kiwi Go-gurt, a few GREEN pickles, a GREEN bottle filled of course with GREEN strawberry kiwi juice, and for desert a little GREEN leprechaun hat.

Which I made from one large strawberry marshmallow (cuz it's all I had in the house) and a ritz cracker, I SHOULD have used GREEN candy melts but since I didn't have any I used white almond bark and added GREEN food coloring, which made it get thick :( LUCKILY, I was able to smooth it over and they still turned out adorable, I aslo melted about 10 chocolate chips and put them in the corner of a ziplock with the corner clipped for piping, to make his hat band, and about that many butterscotch chips to make the gold buckle as well (using the other corner of the ziplock) I think they turned out super adorable! And the kids sure loved them! All food/snacks were individually wrapped in GREEN saran wrap!!
At Rise and Shine time, I woke up my little munchkins for a quick bowl of Lucky Charms, and when they went to the fridge they discovered a sneaky little Leprechaun had turned our milk GREEN. (I sure love the sound of laughter in the morning) I quickly dressed them and myself (in GREEN, of course) and we headed off for our morning school circus.. I mean drop off! After getting L to school I headed over for my most FAVORITE part of every Wednesday, the two hours I spend with PD in his classroom, he was the special snack helper, so of course we HAD to do something fun (and GREEN), I walked in to find a room filled with Leprechauns, dressed in GREEN, disguised as children...

I mean children, dressed in GREEN disguised as Leprechauns, what a fun bunch of little GREEN people! I heard many tales of Leprechauns visiting homes last night, and the tricks they played. From GREEN toilet water, to GREEN Mac and Cheese, there is no doubt there were some very busy Leprechauns in our town today! I helped the talkative children dressed in Green create these adorable Leprechauns,

They each had to finish the sentence, "If I was a leprechaun I would....." The above image is the one made by PD, If he was a leprechaun he would DANCE FREAKISHLEE. That's my boy!!

At Snack time, I wish I had taken more pictures :( We made delicous GREEN, smoothies. PD and I worked up the recipe last night, and it involves (apx amounts)
4 oz GREEN keyLime yogurt
12 oz GREEN Milk
1/2 package of Lemon instant pudding mix
6-8 cubes of GREEN frozen lime jello
Throw it in the blender until its all combined and the Jello cubes are well combined
if your feeling especially GREEN you can always add a few drops of GREEN food coloring too!
It was quite the hit with the little and big people of room 19, even a few visitors stopped in to try it :)

My little Leprechaun was pretty happy to finally sit down and snack after we made enough for everyone!

Those two hours sure flew by! And out the door I went back to L's school to snatch her up,

we came home and had a quick GREEN treat before we had our GREEN lunch :) And got Miss Rebecca dressed for the day!



Tonight we met up with friends at the St Patrick's Day parade in town, it was lots of fun, and we could not have asked for better weather.


I hope that your day was filled with as many blessings as ours!

Super Saturday

It was another wonderful day today! started off with a family shopping trip... OK really there was not much fun about stuffing three kids in the backseat of the car and taking them in and out and in and out and in and out at numerous stores, while daddy complained about them the whole time :( But, we were on a mission to get HIM something to wear to the Father Daughter Dance tonight, because he kept putting it off, litterally until the last minute. Luckily we eventually found something that fit and was aproved and matched the Princess' Outfit for the evening. We made it home just in time to get them cleaned up, dressed and ready to go :) Aren't they cute?

While they were off dancing, and the boys entertained themselves, Mommy snuck off to her room to go through the Easter goodies she's been collecting and started bags for in their baskets. I also put together the Giant eggs the kids and I decorated with stickers the other day for Grams to give them and their two cousins for Easter.

I think they turned out pretty darn cute, and pretty cheap too. Mostly from the Dollar Tree, the four "big" kids get mostly the same thing, bubbles, chalk, fruit snacks, and an egg with 3 rolos (because Pd insisted the other day LOL) I also put mini Princess puzzles in the 2 big girls' and in the baby's there are some super cute StrideRite socks that look like shoes I got on clearance today :) and there is an outfit to go in hers I just didn't get it in there yet. The big Eggs were $1 each, the chalk came already seperated into packages of 5, and there were 4 packs of 5 for $1, the bubbles are fruit scented and were 3/$1 and the fruit snacks were 6/$1 and puzzles 2/$1 so Each egg is less than $3... well the babies will be more because her super cute outfit has two onesie style shirts and some ruffle but pants that I picked up for a wopping $3.50 and her socks were $2 so her Egg will be the most expensive at $6.50 but really that is still a cheap Easter gift. I also spent $3 in stickers to decorate them, total for everything, plus another Egg for a special friend of ours came to $17.50

I have been making lists for the last week or so of things I want to put in the Kids' big Easter baskets this year, I almost always make my own, Last year I got some really awesome baskets on clearance, I can hardly wait to fill them! I got an Awesome Deal on a Littlest Pet Shop Get Well Center

Walgreens had them on sale for $9.99, I couldn't pass it up, I know L will love it! I got the boys some toys to play with at the pool from dollar tree, and some cute peg games from there too. I still have to decide what bigger item I want to put in the boys, and I was going to pick up a Barbie for in L's but I couldnt get away from her at walmart LOL. I always wonder if I am the only mom that has a heck of a time shopping for their kids because they are ALWAYS with me. I will of course include the traditional toothbrush, tooth paste and dental floss, some sort of craft project to make, a book, pencils, bubbles, chalk (can you EVER have enough bubbles or chalk? not at our house) I thought about making my own chalk eggs this year but after pricing out what I need to make them I decided its cheaper to buy the 1/2 dozen at Dollar Tree! What sort of things do you put in your baskets?

Happy Wednesday!

It truly was a happy Wednesday around here, inspite of the crazy foggy haze that surrounded me, it was a GREAT day! I managed to get some craft time in, working on an invite for a great friend of mine who won a raffle on another great friend's Adoption Auction blog.

I also had a chance to add some of the fun baby items I've been collecting to two of the three diaper wreaths I started this past weekend. I still need to add a little bit of something to this first one but I love how it looks so far.


I'm thinking it could use a cute little sippy cup, or frame, or SOMETHING, I also plan to add the little guys' names that the wreaths are for to them.
The 2nd one also needs a few more additions before I will call it complete, but I love it just the same. I think I am having WAY too much fun making these, it's almost adicting!!

The kids and I also jazzed up a few GIANT Easter eggs today that Grams will be giving them and two of their cousins, no pictures yet, you will have to wait a few weeks for that cuteness, yes I did let the kids help decorate them, I wasn't going to, but they already knew about the eggs and they sure love stickers... what kid doesn't right? Heck, what mom doesn't LOVE stickers? OK maybe I don't LOVE them, but only because they tend to adhere to things they shouldn't in my house and never stay stuck where I want them to be.
And lastly I picked up the stuff I need for two other projects I want to do, one I've been "going" to do for close to two years, and one of the edible type that Preston can hardly wait to do!
I hope you all had a wonder Wednesday as well!

Ten on Tuesday

A really AWESOME mom I know is always so on top of EVERYTHING and I'm going to copy cat her Ten on Tuesday List, because I love it so much :) Ten on Tuesday is just a quick.. or not so quick list of ten random things on your mind :) So as my day is almost over.. ok Tuesday was officially over 7 minutes ago but I'm still awake so its still today in my world :) Here are my top ten random things...

1. Love... it's amazing the MANY different kinds of love there are in the world, the love of a friend, the love of a mother, the love of a child, the Love of a stranger.. it can mean so much and appreciated so little.

2. Sarcasm, I probalby use it much much to often, and people probably think I'm crazy for it, but it helps me live and focus on the lighter side rather than... well sadness

3. Children, yep this one is a wide open space, I have three kids they are all compete opposites of eachother, they all have great qualities and they all have some not so great qualities. It's amazing the love you can feel for your children, even in the moments when you'd like to be ripping your hair out, later reminissing with your best friend and laughing makes those moments so much better.

4. Laughter, it really is the BEST sound in the whole world!

5. Learning, everyone learns at different levels, 3 kids, at 3 different levels, with 3 different needs all at the same time (see above ripping hair out) I will be the first to admit that I am NOT smarter than a 5th grader and keeping up with my 6th grader is near impossible, however he is SUPER smart.. too smart for his own good, so smart that he has started to try and get by with out doing his school work, not just a little, not alot TONS, TONS and TONS of school work, this is NOT going over well at home, or school for that matter, and the idea of repeating 6th grade is laying very heavy on my heart. He has a wonderful teacher this year, one that actually cares about helping him, and not just pushing "the problem" to the next teacher, which was not the case last year, and I honestly feel that his teacher from last year was actually quite damaging in his educational road of life :( I knew it from the first moment I met her, and there was nothing I could do about it. My 1st grader however, has a completely different attitude towards school, he is there to impress, he LOVES the attention he gets from teachers and peers when he does well, he works extra hard at everything and is EXTREEMLY hard on himself when he makes a mistake or doesn't get something, it's so heartbreaking as his mother, luckily he has a fantastic teacher, really fantastic is an understatement, because she is so awesome there are no words to describe it, but anyhow, She caught on early how dissapointed in himself he can be when mistakes are pointed out to him and she does a fantastic job of wording things to not be harsh. And last but surely not least is little miss smarty pants who works so hard to try and keep up with her first grade big brother, I can read that too mamma, I can do that too mamma, why can't I go to first grade NOW? She is the one that gave her big brother his competitive desire for learning, because SHE taught him his ABC's and SHE taught him to write his name, and that wasn't going to fly so he had to up his game :)

6. Patience, I seem to have little these days, I just dont have time for it, but I NEED to force myself to make time for it because all the yelling is getting me no where. I'm not really sure when I lost it, because I used to have TONS of patience, but now, not so much, I am always rushing and always busy trying to do something or working on a plan to do something, or running someone somewhere or helping someone with something. Somewhere in the midst of all of that my patience ran off :(

7. Attitude, This year I am working on my attitude towards life, its not the easiest thing in the world, I have alot going on right now, some that I lay out like an open book and some that are self demonds I need to destroy. My overall attitude is not healthy, its not kind, it is the attitude of a broken soul, a lost broken soul, that is struggling to stay afloat and striving to be better for the sake of her children.

8. Sleep, I don't.. not often, not long, and if I do, I'm usually a bear afterwards because I hate waking up LOL Usually a "night" of sleep for me is much like last night, 12:30am fall asleep, 1:40am wake up to L coughing, go to kitchen get her some cough medicine, slather on some vicks on her feet, 2:30am finally fall back asleep, 3am Husband comes to bed and wakes me up, spend the next 30 minutes trying to get comfortable enough to fall asleep again, which is usually just in time for L to wake with another coughing fit, give her a neb treatment, prop up pillows to sit up and hold her in bed while trying to sleep until my alarm starts going off at 6am, text Z, yes I know that is terrible but remember I have a sleeping 58 pound weight on my chest and generally a 95 pound weight on my feet by this point. if he doesn't come in to tell me he is up by 6:40 when I have to wake up Pd then I attempt to roll L off of me get him up get him fed, lucky for me Z is capable of all of this on his own, send Z out the door by 7:30, go out start the car to warm up to take PD to school at 7:45am, and IF I am lucky, I might get home before L realizes I left and get to snuggle up with her for another hour or two, but chances are she realizes I left her with daddy and she is NOT happy about it :( If you are wondering why I dont try to sleep earlier, its because I have horrifying nightmares, they become unbearable anytime sleep seems to find me before 11pm, which happens to be the same time my husband gets off work and either starts calling or texting me, which only adds another moment of being woken up... did I mentionhow much I HATE being woke up?

9. Creativeness, I have a serious case of obsessive creativity if there is such a thing, I have it, ask anyone that knows me, even if they only slightly know me, they probably know my brain never stops, itis constantly think of things to do. CONSTANTLY, I love to make stuff, I love to make stuff for other people, I love the smile that things I create can put on other peoples faces, I LOVE smiles.

10. Easter, I think I have Easter fever, my mind is consumed with Easter baskets for this year, I always make Easter baskets for a few of my special friends, my neices and nephew, and this year will be no different, but finding the time to make things to hide in the baskets this year seems near impossible since I am getting no time away from L with her not feeling well.

soooo, there it is, my first 10 on tuesday.

Playing catch up...

I'm already behind on my posts and I've only been trying for 5 days, it might take me some time to get this down :) We had a fun weekend down in St James, We got to hang out with Grams all weekend, breakfast with some family Saturday morning :) I busted into a craft I've been thinking of doing since I had the basics to what I needed I started my first ever diaper wreath, it was alot of fun to put together, I still have to add all the trinkets to it. So I think I will attemp to add in my first pictures of how I made it :) It was pretty easy once I decided how I wanted to do it :) I had one package of size 1 diapers, I used the target brand because everyone I know that is preggers right now is having a boy and they are just too cute for words :) I ended up making three of them in total, the first one I made I used a 10 inch styrofoam wreath and the other two were 12 inch. The 10 inch one took 13 diapers and the 12 inchers took 15 diapers each. So here is what I started with.

To Start you open your diaper and place it around the wreath at the fold, then use ribbon or string or whatever you have on hand and tie it as close to the wreath as possible, I double knotted mine, then adjusted the ribbon and knotted it one more time.

continue until you cover the entire wreath, and of course if you absolutely must pause for a moment to photograph the handsome cutie that is helping you :0)


And now all I have left to do is add a few personal baby items, once I finish them I will post pictures again :)
Saturday evening we went to check out my "little" brother and his family's new house, he was busy being "crafty" you know how men are, get a house rip it apart :) He had just ripped out the stairs before we arrived and was sheetrocking and building new stairs, luckily his wonderful wife showed us around, I can't wait to go back once its all decorated and put together!
My night mostly went down hill from there, Eliana just cannot seem to kick this cough, it started right after surgery and has just been getting worse and worse, last night she was having coughing fits every 15-20 minutes, which meant no sleep for mamma, and left mamma REALLY missing the comfort of home. Lucky for me Grams didn't wake up durring every coughing fit so she was happy to get up and play some cards with the boys :) Once I finally pulled myself out of bed... I mean Miss L said I could get up ;) I started working on a Bday present for my favorite almost 7 year old girl, It's another fun craft that is perfect for summer comming up, you will have to wait a little while for pictures tho because I think her mamma might sneak over here and peek :0) Before heading home L helped Grams make a yummy batch of home made ice cream, seriously there is NOTHING better in the world than my Grandmother's ice cream... not even dr pepper or ritz crackers, which I could live off of day in and day out :)

Whats Up Wednesday ;o)

It was a slow mommy day today, usually Wednesdays are my favorite day of the week, Eliana has school on Wednesdays and Mommy gets to volunteer in the absolutely most wonderful first grade class room EVER!! I Love hanging out with Preston at school on Wednesday mornings, but truth be told, I REALLY love his teacher, she is definetly one of the best, I admire her incredible devotion and love she has for each of her students, she is exactly the kind of teacher that children need! Unfortunately Eliana is still not feeling the greatest after her surgery so instead I hung out in bed cuddling her on my right and left hand surfing and designing on my laptop on my other side! The day did not drift off in total unproductivity, because as you might have noticed I designed a pretty cool background and header for my new blog! I practiced while making a header for my friend's Ukrainian Adoption Auction blog yesterday, and this morning I did a little more practicing designing a background for their blog, which really meant I no longer had a reason to not start MY own blog :) And here I am! If there is one thing you must know about me, it is that I am a major multi-tasker, if I only have just one thing going, its probably not getting done! I had intended to make this blog post about an awesome craft that Preston and I were going to work on afterschool, but our Camouflauge duct tape has gone missing so a shopping trip will be in store (it's ok, it gives me a reason to go buy pink duct tape too) So be on the look for our project tomorrow evening!

Ready ready ready ready to run... all I'm ready to do is have some F*U*N!!

Yep, it's true, I am finally doing what I've been "going" to do for the last year. Here it is, as fresh as they come, the absolute first blog by me! With March being National Craft Month, and myself being a craft-aholic, I figure what better time to finally kick off my blog :) I'm not making any promises that it will be any where near as awesome as most of the blogs I love, but I will do my best!