New Years

We had a delightful Christmas, the kids were totally spoiled; and it was fun to talk with my little brother, who is on his mission in Eureka California.  It was also really nice to have an hour long church meeting, especially since they had some new toys to keep them occupied and the company of their favorite people sitting next to us. Thinking back it was a really long day but it was so nice to spend it together as a family. We have a new year and yet another anniversary coming up, which I should do something special for....

 a while back we visited the tree house with Liv and Aspen and of course the kids had a great time.

I've started de-cluttering this house and boy is it cluttered. This January I'm gonna hit it hard and make it look like a minimalist lives here, with the hopes of perhaps putting it up for sale sometime in February. I'm thinking that will probably be my goal for 2012, "sell this house". When I get it looking really shabby I'll take some pics and share.
Since it is entirely impossible for me to put my cameras cord in the same place each time I find and use it, I will have to share my families Christmas day pictures at another time.
Have a wonderful new year!

Final tally

I checked my grades for this last semester and I got 2 A's, an A-,B+, and B, and it feels good :).

 Jared thought that he would help me catch up on the laundry yesterday, and now I have several loads of clean clothes waiting to be put away on my couch. If I could hire out any service in my home it would be laundry. I am so blessed that we have so much to wear, but man I hate trying to keep up on it.

My Christmas wrapping is all done, and I actually have my shopping for my in-laws and parents done, but I still don't know what to get Jared. He wants the starwars blueray set but my budget is about $50 short of that, he needs clothes and shoes but I don't know if I want to go shopping with the kids to pick those items up, and really where I could go to get the most of what little money I've got. Maybe tomorrow that will be put on the agenda. Its probably so boring for him to get clothes for Christmas, I'm just not feeling very creative with the gifts though. What I would really like for Christmas is a home depot gift card so I can rip off the ugly white tile that is my kitchens backsplash and replace it with something fancy and nice. I really want to get this home ready to sell, a friend from the ward came over yesterday to give us a bid on the fence and siding hopefully we can get enough to cover the cost of repairing everything ourselves. I still cant believe that the wind cracked my 4x4 pressure treated posts, but I guess it also cracked large evergreens so I shouldn't feel so surprised. The cheapest price for composite fencing I've seen is 3.37 per fence piece at Lowe's, it looks like its good quality, the normal price is 4.90 or something. I tried to dig out some carrots from my garden for stew the other day, and I couldn't even get past a 1/2 inch in the ground which means we wont be able to fix the fence till spring or when the ground thaws. I'm gonna need to have a professional fix the siding because the pieces took flight during the wind storm. I feel like I'm racing the clock but I haven't been given the green flag to go yet.
 Looking around in my ward today made me realize that its gonna be really hard to leave so many friends, Its just so comfortable there, everyone is in about our same financial situation and they are all so easy to talk to and get along with. Who knows we may be stuck in our home for much longer than planned, especially in this economy, but we won't know until we try!

11 days till christmas

This month is going by so fast, I did complete the shopping for the kids, but I haven't even started on anyone else. I'm kinda not in the spirt of it all, like I should be. I'm just tired.. and kinda lazy, I think I need to spend a week without the computer and then I would be far more productive. Hey I graduated! I don't remember if I told you that or not, but I did, now I have my associates, horray! So tomorrow I'm supposed to make 10 dozen cookies and so I will need to go out and buy yet another hand mixer cuz I killed my new $5 dollar one from walmart :(. I'm gonna be all cookied out tomorrow. I ordered my Christmas cards and i'm still waiting for them to arrive... it feels like it is taking forever. I got a letter from my little bro, more like a post it note but yet it had pictures so it brightened my day yesterday. My Christmas card this year just has the kids on it, its easier that way although we had some super cute pictures taken of our whole family I just dont have a copy of the one I like. Jared has been taking the van to work for the past 2 weeks, its been a nightmare trying to do anything in the truck with the two kids, my seat belt doesn't work in there so I just pull it over myself and sit on it so I don't get pulled over- its really doing me no good. It's seriously been such a good feeling to not have class at night, I love being home with my kids. I love the age they are at (except at church with konnor) I wish that they could just stay little forever cuz they're just so stinking cute, they think the lamest things are so cool and are so happy with whatever life gives them. Most of the time they like my cooking although, Makayla is really such a vegetarian she will eat sliced ham, and chicken nuggets but anything else gets picked around. Konnor is my best eater and he will usually dig in to whatever I put in front of him. I'm gonna try to wrap some gifts while I have the energy for it. I hope your all better prepared for Christmas than I am, good luck on the next 11 days.

Delta Blanket + diaper box = Barn

 So I said that I was working on a diaper box project and tonight I got to finish it. It cost zero dollars and it was pretty easy to make. Below is a picture of the boxes I started out with.

 Above is the box with most of the outside covering, and below is the finished product sorry its such a dark picture :(

 It has velcro in the top two corners to keep the barn closed when its being toted, but it should be easy for Konnor to open up the barn and add his cows to it, so we'll see.

If you want to see the whole process with pics I'm gonna be putting it on my search for simple blog -
searchforsimple.blogspot.com