one of those days, continued.

If you haven't read the first 'one of those days' post, please scroll down and read that one first. This is the 'continued' part :)

So after Nathan got home, I put the supper on the table. Brocolli cheese soup and chateau potatoes, which has become our new favorite potatoes!!! (Legatt family recipe) I dished up Nathan's plate while he was washing his hands and if you know Nathan, you know how many mashed potatoes this guy can eat! So I put his plate on the table, obviously too close to Ariella. I turned around in time to see the plate full of potatoes fall to the floor, face down on the carpet. yes, carpet. You know, it would be too easy to put vinyl under the table, right? And also just so you know, 4 out of the last 5 places that we have lived, have had carpet in the dining room under the table!! And remember all the little kids we have?? Yeah...I do a lot of vacuuming!!

Anyway, so the plate was on the floor along with all his potatoes. "Now that makes me mad!" Nathan said as he stared at his potatoes. (But don't worry, I later scooped them off the floor and he ate them anyway!!)

BUT, (there's always a but!!) before I scooped them up, Tiernan decided they looked fun and jumped down, grabbed his remote control car and drove it through the potatoes, furthering the mess on the carpet and getting his car wheels full of potatoes!

Ugh....

I had finally gotten all the dishes clean and I sat down on the couch, when all of a sudden we heard this "PPPPPPSSSSSSHHHHHHHH" noise under the sink. The hoses had come apart under the sink and the pressurized water was shooting out of the pipe! (Ironically I had just told Nathan that there was a slow leak under the sink that he should probably look at...we just replaced the kitchen and bathroom faucets.) By the time Nathan could dash outside and shut the water off (like 10 seconds!), it had filled our kitchen garbage half full!! We are so thankful it happened when it did though and not when we were gone or sleeping. This place would have been completely flooded within a matter of minutes!

So he figured out the problem (the inserts were missing in the connections of the pipes) and went to Lowes before they closed to get the piece he needed.

BUT...remember the but?...once he got home, he looked at the other connection and saw that that one was missing the insert too. So we kept the water off overnight and he went back to Lowes this morning to get another one. We got the water going and were all able to take a shower before church! (btw, I showered all the kids, got them all ready (dressed, brushed teeth, socks/shoes on, potty, etc), showered and got ready myself, and nathan shaved/showered/got ready all within 45 minutes! Pretty good huh??

So from now on we will try not to burn down the place or flood it...especially in the same day!

And for those donuts that made things a little bit brighter amongst the chaos?


Well, I just thought I'd share....

Whole Wheat Donuts
3 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. nutmeg
2/3 cup sugar (preferably rapadura, but sucanut, white, etc would work too)
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup melted butter
Oil for frying (I use coconut oil)

Mix dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Stir in eggs, vanilla, milk and melted butter. Knead dough a few minutes to make sure all ingredients are mixed thoroughly.
On a floured surface, roll dough to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut with donut cutter, or biscuit cutter. Heat oil in skillet…enough to cover the bottom of the skillet about 1/4 inch. Place donuts into the hot oil to fry for 2-3 minutes on each side. Remove from skillet and place on a paper towel lined plate. Sprinkle a mixture of sugar and cinnamon, or sprinkle some powdered sugar over the hot donuts.

one of those days.

Yesterday was definitely "one of those days".

I remember thinking 'is this day over yet?!?' at about 1 in the afternoon, even calling Nathan to see if by chance they were getting off work early...no such luck. Well, my day was about to get even worse...

I had supper done early since it was just soup and had a while before Nathan got home so I figured I'd make some whole wheat donuts (recipe in next post!). As I was frying the donuts on the stove, I noticed that it was getting real smokey in our camper. I looked back at the donuts trying to figure out if it was coming from the pan and didn't see much coming off the pan, but just shrugged my shoulders and turned on the vent above my stove.

A few moments later, I looked around again and noticed that it was even more smokey but didn't smell like anything was burning. 'Well, that's weird!' I thought. All my kids were by me so I knew it wasn't something they were doing. I glanced over to my right and noticed that Ariella's bedroom door was closed...GASP!!! I dashed over there, flew the door open, and found that the heater we keep in her room (with the door usually open so the heat points towards the living room) was face down on the vinyl, still running. I unplugged it and immediately tried to tip it upright...it was stuck to the floor! So I ended up peeling it off the floor, and saw that it had burnt two holes in our floor.




I opened the front door, opened the windows and turned the ceiling fan on high. It was super smokey and I was trying to get it all cleared before Nathan got home in a few mins!! I was worried about what he was going to say but actually he wasn't upset at all. He just said that he figured that we'd need to replace all the floors anyway before we sold the rv just because of the stuff he thought that the kids would do to it!

Well, that was the first thing of the night...

To be continued.

Super Breakfast Cookies

I know, I know...I've got to get on the ball!! There's been so much I've wanted to blog about lately but it's been our usual crazy busy around here and lately I've been feeling sorry for myself since my friends moved away :(

Yes, Meggan and her family, along with the 2 other couples we would see and I would hang out with, moved 2 days ago to another city about an hour from here. Their husbands all drive together to work and moving to this different city didn't have any effect on their drive time so they moved!!

I have no idea as to why they would want to move....I mean, it's only an actual resort that they moved to that has a huge clubhouse with a stone fireplace, tables and chairs, leather couches, huge screen tv, a snack bar, pool table, ping pong table, air hockey, video games, a weight room, a hot tub, a huge outdoor swimming pool, laundry room, 24 hour uniformed security, a baseball field, volleyball court, basketball court, mini golf course, and a petting zoo!!!







I mean, I have no idea why they wouldn't want to stay here with the pavillion that is run down, the bathrooms that have never been cleaned, the washer that doesn't work, a maintence man that doesn't do maintence, 2 rotweilers, several alcoholics, a few homeless people and a SWAT team that was running down the street a few days ago. Just like paradise, right??? (ahem...)




Yes, we are trying to find a different place to live. Not that I have ever really had a reason to feel unsafe here (okay, besides the SWAT team incident, that was kinda freaky) but not having anyone here that I know makes it a little less fun during the day, ya know? We have people from our church looking into some resources they have so hopefully something will pan out. You might be asking why we didn't move with them? Well, like I said it's about an hour away so Nathan would go from having about a 20 min drive to work to an hour and 15 mins to work, including driving in the mountains, so not exactly the best drive. We just decided that with his long hours as it is, we didn't want him driving 2-1/2 hours each day. (He shows up at a different location than than the other guys)

Okay, so now on to something a little more fun to talk about!....food!! Here is a recipe that is SUPER easy and SUPER yummy for breakfast! Breakfast Cookies!! I mean, what kid doesn't want cookies for breakfast?! And with the whole wheat flour and honey to sweeten, it's SUPER healthy!!


Don't they just LOOK fabulous?!

Super Breakfast Cookies (These are SO fluffy and moist and spongey and chewy, we all LOVE them!)

1/4 cup butter
1/2-3/4 cup coconut oil
(the original recipe called for 1 cup butter and no coconut oil)
1/2-3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
1 t. salt
1 t. cinnamon
1 t baking soda
1 t vanilla
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup (or so) of chocolate chips
3/4 cup (or so) raisins --you could also use dried blueberries, dried cherries, etc)

Mix first 8 ingredients in a bowl (i just use a spoon). Stir in flour and oats. If batter is too runny, add a little more flour, if too thick add some milk. Fold in raisins and chocolate chips. Place heaping tbsp of dough on cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 15 mins or until slightly browned. Move to cooling rack. Enjoy!!!

Can You Believe....

....that this little girl is almost a YEAR OLD?!?!


And, yes, she is STANDING by HERSELF. She does that a lot! She's taken a step or two when leaning out to me, but nothing significant.


Here is her funny face that she does when she's smiling big. Too cute!

And here she is with one of her favorite people!


She loves Tiernan (and he loves her!) and they spend a lot of the day together!

***Fun Fact About Ariella*** She is 11 mos old (will be 1 on March 21) and she has NO TEETH yet!! Crazy huh?! I guess Nathan didn't have teeth until he was 11 mos so she must be taking after her Daddy!

Happy Birthday Tiernan!

Wow! Our oldest is 5!!! And we had such a fun time celebrating yesterday! We started out the day at a place here in town that is filled with blow up slides, obstacle courses and stuff to bounce in! It reminded me a lot of our day spent at the Bounce Depot over a year ago but this place was even a little bigger! It was Mom/child day at Fun N Beyond and it just happen to land on Tiernan's birthday so what a great excuse to go bounce (plus we got a discount!...and there was hardly anyone there!) We got there shortly after 9am and left a little around 11am. My kids had a BLAST! Even Meggan and Emmitt were able to come with!

This was their favorite thing...obstacle course with a climbing wall that you needed to clmib in order to go down the extremely steep slide at the end!


Brayan climbing that wall all by himself!! I didn't think he was tall enough to reach but Nathan told Brayan he wasn't going to help and that he needed to do it on his own...and he did!




Tiernan going down one of the slides


The party crew!! (yes, my boys are all in orange...easier to spot that way, remember? :)



After Fun N Beyond we went to Chick-Fil-A to eat and they played more in the play place there. Then we ran some errands and finally made it home early afternoon. I thought for surely my boys would be sleeping by the time we got home, but noooooo, no one slept. (Caedmon did end up napping for about a half hour once we got home, but that was it!) But the best part was that Nathan got off work early for some reason yesterday and since you got an ALL DAY pass at Fun N Beyond (I just wore a wrist band), we were able to go back in for a while with Dad before bible study!!...and there was only 1 other family there! We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves!

The kids ran around again and had even more fun with Dad!


I think I will definitely be going back there. It was well worth the money to have my kids run, run, run and bounce, bounce, bounce constantly for hours!!! Especially since they don't exactly get to do that in the camper!!

Even the adults had fun!!


Meggan bouncing!


Nathan bouncing!



Nathan sliding!


I was resting! Climbing that wall and going thru the obstacle course is hard work!


Lisa came over and gave Tiernan a gift...he loved it!!! (He also got some stuff from Gmas and Gpas in the mail but I'll post about that later!)

Not Me! Monday

This week there was no way that I told my 4 yr old that I would give him 10 cents if he would go wipe his 2 yr old brother's butt when he was done on the potty because I was busy changing a diaper. Nope! Not me!

And while shopping this week with my flock of little kids, Ariella started getting really fussy, which is very out of the ordinary for her. After trying to think of why she was upset, there was no way that I realized that i forgot to feed her breakfast. Nope! I mean, what mother in their right mind would forget to feed their child and then wonder why they were crabby?! Definitely not me! (But then again, I'm probably not in my right mind most of the time!!)

And after buying a gift for Tiernan for his birthday and hiding it in the car, I did not forget to move the gift before we got into the car the next time and he totally did not see it and exclaim with delight that he wanted it! Then I did not try to convince him that it wasn't for him and that I was bringing it back to the store just to try to get him to forget about it. Nope! Not me!

And then I did not find an open sucker in Caedmon's pocket that he got at a friends house the night before which he put there to 'save for later'...ugh...Nope! Not me!

Not Me Monday is a blog carnival created by McKMama.

Tent time

"Let's make a tent!"

This is something that I hear often. But how exactly do you keep making tents that are different to keep it fun, in a camper?

Well this is what I came up with for the last one.

I dropped the table down to make a little play area behind the blanket and then tacked the blanket to the top of our slide, making a "wall"!



We even did shadow puppets when the sun was shining in the windows!

The other night the kids were all piled in the boys' room making a mess (obviously!). Well one of the things that Ariella did was clean out the boys' drawer with all their underwear and socks in it. You can't really tell from the picture but on her head is a pair of Caedmon's underwear! Opening the door to this was extremely hilarious!! She just crawled right out of there with those little army undies on her head!

The Kitchen

Speaking of kitchen...I have really been enjoying cooking and baking lately and have found myself making stuff without measuring and adding things on the whim, which is something I wouldn't have done before! It's so fun!! I'll hafta include some recipes on here soon, or email me if you are interested! Veggies have been our #1 food lately! So yummy!!

So....Here is our kitchen!


Above the fridge is where I keep the electric griddle, cooling racks, ice cream maker, and a basket full of dehydrated blueberries and cherries (remember? I have a LOT of those!)

Above the microwave is where I keep my pie pan, bread pans, and some misc stuff. Speaking of microwave...they finally came and got it the other day so now we just have a big hole where the microwave used to be! The were supposed to replace it but the one they brought was too small for the space! Why did they have to replace it? Well, because this one had NO buttons on it! That's right...no way to operate it! Crazy huh? Even though we never use a microwave and haven't owned one in years, we wanted it there so we didn't have to deal with it later and it was sold to us with all the appliances 'working' so we wanted them to fix it.

Below the oven is where the hot water controls are. In the big cupboards above the sink is where my cookbooks are plus all the plates, bowls, glasses, pots, blender, food processor, and mixing bowls are. Under the sink you'll find the garbage (imagine that!), baking dishes and pans for the stove.

In the drawers I keep silverware, dish rags, cooking utensils, etc.

And way up on top I bought some valences and hemmed them and hung them on a tension rod to cover up my bigger appliances like my bosch, grain mill, and dehydrator.

Oh, and way on the side (behind our water filter) is a cupboard door that opens and that has all our rv controls behind it...Our slide buttons, our sensors to tell us how full our tanks (even though it doesn't work) and how charged our battery is, and the switch for the water heater...rememeber that??...yeah, that's where it is! It also has the switches for our awning outside and the lights switches for our outside lights as well!

This is our pantry.

On the very top we have a drawer with some misc stuff in it and a basket where I keep office type stuff--paper, tape, ruler, etc. In the top cupboards I have all our vitamins and suppliments, noodles, and a few baking things. in the big middle cupboard is where I keep canned goods, baking items, jars of homemade applesauce and jam, spices, and pretty much anything else that doesn't belong in the fridge :) In the bottom cupboards I have 2 baskets for onions and potatoes and then a basket that holds our central vac hose and attachments.

Next up?...."Dining Room"...as if it were a seperate room...ha!

Not Me! Monday & more!

I did not get woken up early by my husband the other morning saying "Dawn! Come here!" only to find that he needed my help to open the child-proof locks on our pantry. I guess they work well!

I also did not go to the fitness center in town and sign up for a family membership only to go in the next day and cancel it. I mean, a person should really have their mind made up before they sign up for anything and not try to surprise their husband with it, so I certainly didn't do that. And if I did do that, I certainly wouldn't have tried to keep all 4 kids corraled by me the whole time they were doing the 'new membership' process to me during sign up. Nope! Not me!

And I did not have to put flowers from my sweet husband yesterday in a blender because we don't own a vase. Nope! Not me!

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Speaking of the blender....it kind of gets overshadowed anyway by the beautiful 18 roses Nathan came home with last night for Valentines Day!! Dontcha think?! And they weren't exactly a surprise since Nathan called me on the way home and told me he needed to stop for gas....yeah, I know better. He did get gas, but it took him almost 45 mintues to get home when it should have only taken 30 at the most. He said he messed up and shouldn't have called at all :) That's okay, I'll take the flowers anyway. They smell amazing!


My gift to Nathan was supposed to be that membership to the fitness center but since we decided to cancel it..ahem..I made him a lemon meringue pie instead :) There's one piece left.

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Have I ever told you how much I LOVE my grocery store here?!? Well, I do! They have SO much variety and the store is big and clean and new and they have organic everything! But here is another reason I love it!

And that is how we roll!...through the grocery store that is! I can have all 3 boys strapped in and Ariella snug in the back. And when I say 'snug', I mean SNUG! She pretty much fills the back but once I get $150 worth of groceries in there, she's pretty much buried :)
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Brayan in time out....hehe

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Here is another pic of the snow amount that we got. This is Nathan's co-worker Matthew's car.

It took a little while to get it shoveled out.

Hurdles

I thought I'd give you a glimpse as to how we entertain the kids in the camper and how these very active boys get some of their energy out living in such confined spaces. Well, this is one way...

Seriously.

The kids love it and it wears them out a little! All I (or Nathan) need to do is sit on the couch and hold our leg up. They start at one end of their bedroom and run across, hurdling over our leg, and then continue to run (when they don't fall!) to the other end of our kitchen, and back again. It is really quite hilarious when they start to get tired and can't quite jump high enough :) We end up lowering our leg for the little boys :)

Whatever works!!

Bumpers

Since we can't have typical bed rails on the bunk beds because the bed attaches to the walls and you can't have the safety strap wrap around the bottom of the bed, and because no where else sells rails for camper bunks, this is how we keep the boys from falling out of bed at night....

It is called a bed bumper and it's super cool! You can order them at gobedbug.com. Bascially it's just a piece of foam that goes directly on top of the mattress, under the sheets* and acts as a 'bumper' or wall, keeping them from falling out! I have one like this on each side of the lower bunk for the little boys and then one on the top bunk for Biggie. Easy Peasy!

*Dontcha just love our sheets?! :) They were made especially for our bunks from Gma Barb! Since I didn't want to spend a katrillion dollars on sheets made specifically for camper bunks (they are very long and narrow), I gave my mom my idea and she made them! What was my idea?? Well, after taking the measurements, I thought that they came close to being as wide as a toddler bed/crib mattress. So I measured...and guess what?? They were exactly the same width AND depth!!! So all we needed to do was to cut the crib sheet down the middle and add length to the center so that way we could keep the elastic on the corners! Nice and simple!

3 days

Instead of doing a "not me" monday post, I'm doing a "i did this" friday-monday post :)

In the last 3 days I have:

-made supper by candlelight
-heated water on the stove to use to wash my hair
-watched my diry clothes pile up
-scrubbed the floor over and over after lots of glass shattered and no vacuum
-had 3 seperate incidents with toddlers and peeing in clothes or on bed
-had 1 incident of baby tipping over potty that was just used
-been really tempted to buckle my kids in the car for awhile so they could watch a movie and sit still
-been really cold at night
-listened to the neighbors generator
-listened to our vehicle run to charge our rv
-learned that you can still use lights and propane if connected to car's battery
-learned that we have an outlet that works like a cirgarette lighter in the car does and will run off battery and doesn't need electricity, meaning I could charge my phone and even watch tv with an inverter!
-not been able to vacuum (HUGE when I usually do it several times a day!)
-listened to trees falling down and branches breaking off due to the heavy snow
-listened to icicles fall
-learned a LOT about what 'real' camping is all about
-bonded more with our neighbors/nathan's co-workers since we all had nothing else to do!
-watched nathan get stuck and unstuck in our driveway
-watched several people get stuck in the campground
-let the kids wear their winter coats inside because they were cold
-watched as my kids each sat on their own vent when the heat turned on
-used water from gallon water jugs to brush teeth, do dishes, flush the toilet..pretty much everything
-tried to explain to my kids over and over why we can't turn lights on, watch tv, flush the toilet normally or turn up the heat
-automatically tried turning on the faucet only about a gazillon times
-was reminded how blessed we are and how easily we can take things for granted
-was worried I wouldn't make it out of the campground today
-was surprised when I actually did
-got all my laundry done by my sweet and generous sister in law who had us over today

And the best thing that has happened in the last 3 days is that our electricity came back on tonight!!! YAY!!! And to top it off...our water works too!! Praise God! THAT was getting real old, real fast!

The not-so-good part? We are supposed to be getting 6-11 more inches of snow tomorrow and tomorrow night....UGH! Does it look like we need more snow?!?


This is the same picnic table I took a picture of before....not too recognizable!

This is NOT a snow drift by the van...that's the actual amount of snow we were getting!


For now, I'm off to sleep in my nice, warm, quiet (no more noisy neighbor generators), bed!!

Imagine

Imagine you live in a camper, in a campgroud, a few miles away from major roads. Imagine it's snowing HARD and has been snowing going on 2 days. Imagine having 18-24inches of snow on the ground and it's still snowing. Imagine not having a truck. Imagine not owning a shovel. Imagine not having any electricity or running water. Imagine having 5 of your 6 people in your camper needing to use the toilet...which has no water. Imagine only having your furnace and stove run off your battery which will only last 4 hours. Imagine being told you will be without electricity for a couple/few days.

Welcome to our world.

:)



I cleared the snow off the picnic table yesterday morning...




This is what we have to rely on to get us unplowed...yeah...he was trying to get it started and unstuck. And remember, he doesn't use the bucket in front, he just pulls a blade behind him that basically rides on top of the snow...