Lex and Lilly, Plus Some Really Great Knitting Pictures

I'm not going to lie, I kind of like my kids. They crack me up. They are zany, sweet, loving, and hysterical. But what's really great is how good of friends they are.  They are 18 months apart, and instead of bickering and fighting like I've seen other siblings do, they love to play with each other.  It makes my life so much easier!  And, I'm not going to lie, it's stinking cute.  But enough of my ridiculous writing, (reading it just makes me want to go eat a power tool.) I'll show you with pictures.

yup, more pajama pictures

 I am the luckiest mother in the world.  After lunch the other day my kids wanted to learn how to knit.  I just put some yarn on some needles and let them play.  Lex was actually really good. He  seriously wanted to learn how, and could almost do it on his own.  Not bad for a just turned five year old!

Ok, I'm almost done. Thanks for even still being here. I'm kind of impressed.  Stop by the store and I'll give you a cookie! This is my latest hat.  I've seen them around, and had someone who wanted one. I must say then Mohawk hat turned out pretty cool. The Sug (my husband, short for sugar pea. Pronounced shug) even says he'd wear one! I don't know that I want my 5 year old wearing one, but that's just me.

Yes, my son does have a gross bloody nose. The air is dry. Deal with it! 

In Which I Bake and Awesome Dirt Bike Cake, Ringo Star Plays Baseball, and My Boy Turns Five!

The past couple of weeks have been insane.  My little boy turned 5 on Thanksgiving! I can't believe it! My baby boy is a whole hand.  It's killing me,but I'm not going to lament the aging of my children on this post.

My son and my husband love to watch Motocross and Supercross, so of course Lex requested a dirt bike cake.  After scouring the internet and finding some pictures of cakes, my awesome sister and I decided to take on the challenge. So after nearly burning down my house, incurring the wrath of my husband,  and scorching the cake, we managed to make quite and awesome cake, if I do say so myself.

We started with a sheet cake and a regular 13x9 cake. 

we used sheet cake as the base, and cut up the regular cake to make the jumps and whoops.

Thanks Haley for icing it.

I've noticed through this blog that we spend an awful lot of time in our PJ's

Lex helped put the marshmallows on to show the riders where to go.

I'm pretty proud of how it all turned out, considering how awful it started.

In our downtime Ringo Star came to our house to play some baseball.  Lilly constantly cracks me up with her dress up outfits! That girl is a diva!

So, my boy turned five.  We ended up having a party at the local indoor water park, which was a blast.  I would post pictures but I can't seem to choose the best ones out of the 100s I took.  It's just amazing to me how fast my sweet little man is growing up.  He's already a rock star!

Yup, another picture with my kids in their PJ's!

Yea, I made that

Being a parent you have to make things even, so after making Lex the kind-of-awesome frog sweater. I made Lilly  a new hat, and a mermaid.   Both of which she requested.  The flower hat is something I improvised and really ended up loving, and the mermaid is a little wonky, but so cool.  Check them out.

A Tribute to my Legs

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my legs. On Saturday they got up bright and early and waited outside in the frigid temperatures, to start the longest race they have ever endured. Despite my nerves and their shivers they started running at 8 am and kept on going. They kept running at mile 7 when I was almost hit by a car. (It clipped the lady 2 feet in front of me. Scared the crap out of me.) And they kept moving at mile 9 when my ipod took a dump and stopped playing my audiobook. (I almost cried. I had to run 17 more miles without any music or audiobooks! It still won't turn on.) They continued on as I passed the 13.1 mile marker, marking the half way point. They weren't phased by being only half done, thought mentally I was a little. They continued at a surprisingly steady and swift pace through miles 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 impressing the crap out of me since I have never run so far in my life. At mile 20 they started to falter but wouldn't quit. When at mile mile 21 my knee hurt so bad I thought I would cry and then started to give out, they slowed to a walk, but kept on moving. Despite all odds they started to pick up the pace and continued to carry me at a trot, albeit a slow one, until my knee gave out again. They continued this through miles 22, 23, 24, and 25. I must say that miles 22 through 25 may have been the hardest things I have ever done. I couldn't form any thoughts other than just simply repeating to myself, "put one foot in front of the other." Then unexplicably my legs just took over and at mile 25 my legs went into autopilot and trotted to the end of the race. Finishing at just over 5 hours, with a time of 5:07:57. I had hoped on running it in around 5:30, so I was pretty thrilled with this time.

So here's to my legs who may not be long,  skinny, or particularly nice looking, but gosh darn, it they took me harder and farther than I ever expected them to go. They amazed me with their stamina, their desire, and their unrelenting power. Who knew they had it in them!

Frogtastic!

I've finally finished Lex's frog sweater.  I have been working on this sweater on and off for about 3 months.  I saw it here on Ravelry, and knew that my frog obsessed son would love it.  Thus began my biggest knitting project to date.  I'm pretty impressed with the results. Lex really likes it too.  I may have threatened him by saying that I would kill him if he didn't wear it after all the work I did. Ok, I didn't actually say that, but I did think it.

Aren't these buttons adorable? The eyes are googly! 

Pumpkin Time

It's that time of year. Time to carve some pumpkins.  The kids love carving pumpkins.  I've never really gotten into the whole thing, but they love it, and Ty does all the work.  So I don't mind. Though I do wonder why we put them in nice clean pj's before we had them dig out pumpkin slime with their hands.

 I may have gone overboard with the pictures. Sorry.

Baking with the Princess

I love to bake. We are always cooking or baking something special on my day off.  Both my kids love to cook with me, but Lilly definitively likes it the most.  She will bake all morning with me, and then go to her little play kitchen and pretend to bake for an hour more.   This being October and harvest time, I have not seen my men in days.  So while they were out hauling corn in the tractor Lilly and I made a delicious Cinnamon Sugar Apple Cake.

I must say that I have become quite obsessed with The Tasty Kitchen.  This is an amazing site with a bazillion recipes for anything and everything. (Yes, a bazillion. I counted,)   I first came across it while checking out my favorite blogger, The Pioneer Woman. Her site is amazing, and she helped create The Tasty Kitchen.

While perusing around The Tasty Kitchen for new recipes I came across blogger Pinch of Yum's recipe for Cinnamon Sugar Apple Cake.  It looked so good Ihad to try it out. I printed it off and took it home for the Bug and I to make. To make a long story short, it was super easy and super yummy.  Pick up the recipe here at Pinch of Yum's blog, and make sure you check out The Tasty Kitchen.

Cinderella has to bake with us as well.

Pumpkin Jars

First of all I want to say congrats to your Digital Scrapbook Software winner Lea-Ann! I'll be contacting you with all the information you will need to get that set up.

 The kids and I have been doing some really great crafts lately, thanks to Family Fun Magazine.  So last Thursday on my day off we decided to make Jar-O-Lanterns.  These ended up super cute and were very fun to make. The kids had a blast.

Once we put candles in these in the evening they look awesome.  To get all the directions on how to do this fun and easy craft go to Family Fun and make one with your kids tonight!

I'm a Slacker and a Fantastic Giveaway!

I love to take pictures of my kids.  I mean, seriously they are the cutest things on the planet.  It would be a crime not to be constantly taking pictures of them. Here's the problem with that. I am a complete scrapbook slacker.  I have hundreds of photos laying around at home and saved on my computer, and none of them are being displayed or preserved in a scrapbook to cherish in my old age.. So when I opened an email last week from Liz at MyMemories.com I almost peed my pants with excitement. Liz is giving me the opportunity to try out their amazing digital scrapbook software, and here's the great part, giveaway a free copy of their scrapbook software! That's a $40 value! Aren't you glad you read my blog?

I have been playing with this software since I downloaded it on Monday, and you will not believe how easy and fast it is.  I've made 2 scrapbooks with it already!

I seriously made this cute little card in under one minute! (I timed myself)

I use the fast photo add feature.  This is great for people with no time.  All you do is pick a album design, and choose all the photos you want in it, and they put them in for you.  You can go through and change them if you want, but most of the time they are grouped nicely together and look great! Then just go through and add text in the convenient little text boxes they put on the pages, and your done!  They have tons of free templates to download. This one is my favorite!

So I'm going to make this giveaway really easy.  All you have to do is go here, and look at all the great free kits they have. Then leave me a comment on my blog,telling me which free kit is your favorite. I will have a random generator select the winner on Wednesday! Tell you friends!

P.S. You can learn more about the My Memory Suite that I'm giving away here.

The Museum, Running, and Possibly Jail

Last week I took my two little ones down to Indianapolis to the Children's Museum.  If you have never been there, you must go.  I loved the dinosaur exhibit and the new Treasures of the Earth exhibit as much as my children.

Here's Lilly. Apparently she's a transformer and I never even knew it!

Lex turned into a dinosaur while we were there. Also surprising.

They were able to dig for dinosaur bones and also for Chinese clay soldiers.

They were pretty tuckered out by the time we went home. 

On to more news. I have recently decided to run a marathon this November.  I am not a great runner, but I'm not horrible. I've run about 5 mini marathons and thought, "What the heck. When is going to be a better time to train for this thing than now." So I signed up.

This news was met with mixed responses. My mother thought it was awesome. My brother Zach can't let me do anything without him, so he is now running the marathon with me. My sister and the rest of my side of the family thought it was great. That was the supportive side of the family. 

When explaining to my husband how great it would be to join the elite few who had run a marathon he said, "You wouldn't be one of those because you won't run the whole thing." Ahh, the ever support and praising Tyler.  He's always so proud of me, can't you tell?

And then, there is my Father-in-Law Tom. When hearing the news from Tyler, (I would never tell Tom thison my own for fear of his typically rude comments) Tom said, "You know it's 26.2 miles right?

"Yes, Tom. I am aware of the distance of a marathon." I replied in my nice, calm voice, that hid the irritation I felt.

"You know you are going to have to practice running long distances right? I don't think you will be able to do this." He said back to me, smiling the whole time

I replied "Umm, yea.  I was kind of planning on running at least one long distance run every week to prepare, and then a bunch of smaller ones on the other days. Hopefully by a couple weeks before the marathon I will be able to run a 17 to 20 mile run." Seriously, there has got to be some kind of reward waiting for me in heaven for dealing with this man.

Tom happily ends the conversation with this little comment. " Well, you probably will be able to since you go so slow.  Anyone could do a marathon at your pace." 

Yup, that's what he said.  Which  leads me to the next part of this blog post, and explains the title.  I may got to jail sometime in the future for killing this man.  After  insulting my running skill,. (Okay, I may not be fast, but I've never seen you go any farther than three miles Tom!) he turns to my 3 year old daughter and reminds her that the whole extended family is going out to eat tomorrow. She turns to him all excited and tells him what she is going to have when they go. She wants two grilled cheese sandwiches and some applesauce. My gem of a Father-in-Law replies with this, "Well I don't think you should have 2, it'll make you chubby." 

Yup, I'm going to kill him. (As a little background to the situation, these people are OBSESSED with weight.  They have been giving me a hard time for years for eating a whole sandwich).  I draw the line at saddling a three year old girl with worrying about her weight. I politely told him that she could eat anything and as much of it as she wanted, gathered my family up, and went home.  I'm seriously not looking forward to going out to eat tonight.   

We've Got Eggs!

Our chickens are now officially hens! We've got eggs! Friday afternoon I went to check on the chickens before I went home.  When I got there, I saw a beautiful little egg sitting in the nesting area.  Me, a very serious 27 year old, screamed like a little girl and ran around the yard waving my arms madly. Sadly, my kids were not with me at the time, so I called them and told them the great news.  Apparently, Lex, after hearing the news, also screamed and ran around waving his arms madly .

That night we scrambled up our tiny little egg and the kids ate it.  Lex said, "This is the best egg I've ever tasted."

My Mother gathered another egg on Saturday and then the kids, for the first time, collected two eggs on Sunday. We also spent Sunday afternoon fencing in the chickens yard, but I'll leave that for another post. Suffice it to say, the kids and I are ecstatic with our lovely little chickens and their perfect little eggs!