In Memory Of.....

.....Norman and Gill. (unknown - 7/16/08). Their bowl was rather dirty so I decided it was time to change the water. Well, an hour or so after they were in their nice clean bowl, I noticed that Norman was swimming sideways. I would come over by the bowl and he would quickly swim in the opposite direction, so I figured maybe he was resting. Well then a few minutes later, he was "resting" on his side on the bottom of the bowl. Tiernan kept saying "Fishy yake (wake) up!" I corrected him telling him that "he is not sleeping, Tiernan, he is dead...." Then a little while later I noticed Gill doing the same thing. And not too long after that, he was taking his "nap" at the top of the bowl. Strange.... maybe I put too cold or warm of water in their bowl when I cleaned it?? I've done it several times before so I thought I did everything the same.... Oh well..... we had a fun time flushing them down the toilet!! Tiernan said "Bye Norman! Bye Gill!" as they disaapeared into the sewer system. He said that we'll have to get more next time we are at the store...maybe we'll wait awhile :)

I've had a pretty busy week getting back into the swing of things from being gone this weekend, so sorry I haven't posted in a while!! Now that I know most of my family checks this like everyday, I need to get on the ball!!

A couple days ago we needed to get out of this apartment (and we desperately needed groceries!) so I decided to take the kids by myself to Mason City to go to Walmart and Hyvee. Before we even left the house, I was asking myself "why am I doing this again?!?!" But I got them all rounded up in the car and we were off! The first stop at Walmart went amazingly well! I parked right by the cart holder thing and there just HAPPENED (thank you Jesus!) to be one of those carts that you can strap little active toddlers in so Tiernan and Caedmon went right from their car seats to the cart and buckled in (they mean business too with those straps...I felt like I was buckling them up to go on a upside-down rollercoaster!! There were straps across their lap, between their legs, and over their shoulders!!....hey, the more they can't move, the better, right??...hehe :) Anyway, but then when I was about to put Brayan into the front of the cart, they had the spot where his legs would go blocked off! Ugh....thankfully I had my ERGO with me and I was able to just strap him to by body and into Walmart we went!!

The next stop wasn't as nice....the only good thing about Hyvee was that I was able to park in the shade!! After walking the kids into the store, I realized that they would have to ride in a normal cart. So I put Brayan in the front, Caedmon in the big part in the back and told Tiernan to ride on the front of the cart. Then I thought 'should I be bringing a cart for the food??' But since I get enough looks the way it is, I didn't want to cause anymore distractions by pushing and pulling two carts. So into the grocery store we went. The first part wasn't bad until I started to put food INTO the cart. Caedmon wanted to repeadedly pick up and drop anything that was in the cart, which was fine if it was a can or something, but we had mostly fruit, EGGS, etc. So that didn't work so well. Then, since Caedmon is NUTS for grapes, I decided to keep the grapes up by Brayan so caedmon wouldn't eat half of the grapes before we got to the check-out. Well, while I was staring at some organic cream to make butter, I noticed some grapes rolling by my feet....I looked over and saw that Brayan had dumped over the grapes and they went everywhere!! Ugh.... so as I was quickly trying to pick up all the grapes, caedmon starting throwing things OUT of the cart and of course Tiernan got a kick out of this... SOOO...I decided I had all I needed and we exited the store...finally!! (and yes, the boys DID get in trouble for this...) All this PLUS it was 92 degrees out and completely SUNNY with NO WIND!! Oh yeah, and the air in the van IS NOT WORKING!!! Man, I can't tell you how sweaty I was after we got back...whew!! Then when we got back here, I had to make 5 trips up and down the stairs carrying in the groceries before bringing in the kids....and I didn't turn on the air before we left, so it was probably 92 degrees in here too when we got back....GREAT!! So that was my fun a couple days ago :)

Yesterday was mostly baking as I became motivated from reading a couple ebooks I got from the Urban Homemaker on Sensational Summer Salads and Breakfast for Busy Moms! I decided that I needed to start making breakfast for Nathan so I've been planning on stuff that I can start the night before so the morning is quick and easy! Yesterday I started out by making homemade, from stratch blueberry muffins. They were so easy!! (and yummy!) and since I was at it, I mixed up another batch of the dry ingredients and put it in the freezer so next time I want to make them, I just have to pull that out and add the wet ingredients and voila! muffins!! Then after those I made smoothies for lunch. And again...SOO EASY!!! just throw some yummy stuff in a blender (strawberries, yogurt, egg yokes, etc) and drink! Everyone loved these!! Then I made 2 batches (4 shelves in my dehydrator) of fruit leather and again...YUM! So it was a good cooking day! Oh yeah, then I made 2 loaves of bread in the evening, but that's really no big deal... By the way, I ordered a Bosch mixer to mix my dough instead of hand kneading so I can multi-task, so I'm really excited to get that!!

Today I've been trying to get laundry organized and mostly just same old stuff. Although I did put a batch of beef in the dehydrator to make jerky so I'm SOOO looking forward to having that in a couple hours!!

Talk to you soon!! Oh, the picture below is of Brayan in the outfit that my Aunt Carol got for him, isn't it cute?? :)

I had to take the picture 'on the move' :) Thanks Carol!! It's so cute!!