benjamin's first swing

bird feeders

while playing at andy woods, we found these huge pine cones...i was taken back to my childhood when we made pine cone bird feeders. so samuel and i collected pines cones, bought bird seed & pb and invited our cousins over to make them!

audrey liked to lick the peanut butter
lukey working intently on his bird feeder
samuel spreading the pb
sprinkling the seeds and patting them on the sticky, pb-covered pine ones
the finished product!


ps so far our little feeders appear untouched...hmmmm....hoping the birds find them soon!

matching

well i love matching my boys...it's the "fun" part of playing dress-up for this boymom!

laundry

this post is dedicated to my friend, kate! (check out her great blog) laundry takes over my life...it's a bad cycle i get myself into. i start a load, dry it, move it to the bed, start more loads, dry them and move them to the bed...and i NEVER fold them one at a time.

so a lot of times my bed looks like this:

each night we have to move the laundry to the floor or table and then it gets moved back to the bed the next day when i am cleaning. after about 4 days of this process i either have to put on a movie and psych myself up to fold laundry OR my sweet hubby gets frustrated enough and folds all 80 loads! it's really not a good thing. i have been trying very hard lately to stay on top of my laundry...one load at a time! :)

so in the light of laundry, let me tell you about me making our laundry detergent. yes, that's right i made it! i visited my friend kelly and she made hers and i really liked it. we had to wash about 6 loads in the 22 hours we were there because samuel got the stomach virus. :( anyway, check out her blog post about how to do it.

i do love a good, strong detergent smell but i love saving my money on things like detergent. so i was willing to give it a try. i bought some nice softener sheets to add a little scent. or if you like the clean only smell you wouldn't have to use anything.

the ingredients below: (i was going to double the recipe but i quickly learned that grating 4 bars of soap was enough for one evening!) i found the same soap as kelly used so i bought it. i had to go to drug emporium to find all my ingredients.

my finished project! i bought this cute jar at target to hold my detergent. the amount below cost me about $10. i think it will yield about a 140 loads.

i love the thought that i made my own detergent...so granola-y of me! which if you know me, you know i am not really like that. but when it's available and easy, why not!?

lovey doveys

valentine's day

this is how we celebrated valentiMe's day:

samuel making his valentine's (i can't believe i forgot to get a pic of the finished project!)

samuel's v-day party at school

baby norah rose visits!

happy birthday kyle!

well i am behind...but better late than never! :)

kyle turned 34 on the 11th. he spent his b-day weekend with some of his best friends in ruidoso, nm. aren't they cute!?

chance, kyle, alan & matt

when he got home we celebrated him with an early morning birthday party!

samuel's sweet sign

my boys....with their sleepy eyes :)
and one more special thing...last year kyle WALKED on his birthday (feb 11, 2010) for the first time after his wreck! this was an emotional, glorious, thankful and precious event for us!! praise the lord!

dandelions & hipstamatic