A trip down memory lane...

Since I was digging through my old pictures to find a picture to show off my tan, I decided to scan a few others and share.

Here I am with my aunt Mary Beth sitting on the back porch of my grandparents house. I think I was probably 2 or 3 yrs old since I still had long hair.

Here I am with my aunt Julie inside my grandparents house.

I had to ask my mom what I was doing in this picture. She said that I used to make up stories all the time and my aunt Fran (who is actually a cousin but I always called her aunt) was egging me on. I guess my aunt Chris thought it was hilarious.


Here I am with straight hair after my mom finally had my hair cut. She always regretted it because she loved my curls. I hated them though because back then, there wasn't any kind of detangler. I think I was 4 in this picture or maybe 5.

Got to love the 70's

And finally, my 10th grade school picture.

Now that's tan!

A few posts back, Melodie asked me where Shawn gets his tan from. Believe it or not, he gets it from my side of the family. I was always really tan in the summer. To prove it, here is a picture of me when I was about 6.

Click to Give

Some of you may already know about this site but I felt like it was important to share with anyone unfamiliar with The Hunger Site. Please visit The Hunger Site daily and click (it's free). Every click helps feed the hungry!

New tooth?

Joshua is now 27 months and he still doesn't have all his baby teeth yet. I'm not even talking about his 2 yr old molars (he doesn't have those yet either). I'm talking about his cuspids. Today I finally think I saw what looks like a cuspid tooth on the bottom left side trying to push through so hopefully within the next few days we may have a new tooth!

I love free things!

I love getting things for free! Today, I responded to a freeshare ad for girls legos. As far as I'm concerned, legos are legos and I didn't think Shawn would care less about them being in a pink box so, we went to go pick them up in the Bloomingdale area. Since they were free, I don't feel like I have the right to complain but...I was a little disappointed in the amount of legos in the box. Here's what we received.


The legos barely covered the bottom of the container, lol. I could fit them in a sandwich sized Ziplock and still have room to spare. I am grateful for free legos. However, I think I paid for them in gas!

I'm feeling a little out numbered today

Oh, the joy of being a mother to two boys! Today, we ran a few errands and I stopped at Walmart to buy some tapes for the camcorder. While we were there, we bought some school supplies that were on sale. Next thing I know, Joshua has white stuff in his hair. He had gotten a hold of the Elmer's glue and opened it and got it in his hair, on his shirt, and all over his hands. Thankfully, he didn't get it on any of the other school supplies.

As we were leaving Walmart, Joshua points to my boob and says belly. I told him that wasn't mommy's belly. Of course he asked "why"? I told him that was mommy's booby but we don't say booby to people because it's not nice. Then Shawn piped in and said "but if I say that I like your booby, that's nice. Right mommy?" Umm, no. We don't say that. Then Shawn says "I said LIKE your bobby". "I know what you said and like is a good word but you don't say I like your booby to women" Ugh, I can't imagine what it's going to be like in a couple of years when we have to explain sex, lol.

Feeling Green

I'm feeling kind of green today. Not green with envy but in the recycling mood kind of green. I was browsing a few green websites today and found these cool recycling ideas:

The first one is a site that recycles your old toothbrushes. Who would have thought? Actually, they have to be their brand of toothbrushes but now it makes me want to buy their brand. They have a subscription of 4 toothbrushes for $11.00. I don't think that's a bad price considering the toothbrush handles are made out of recycled plastic and you can send in your old toothbrushes to be recycled for free. They have other products too and their website says they are now available at Target.

Here's a cool book: Hungry Planet:What the World Eats. I'm excited to check this book out at the library. If you want to know what it's about, click on the link and read the Amazon.com review.

I'm not sure if I would ever want to buy one of these, but it is a pretty neat idea.

I dream of someday having a green house. If I won the lottery, I would buy a large piece of land and have a house built the way I want using recycled materials and energy efficient materials. I would have enough room in my yard to plant a veggie/herb garden and even have some fruit trees/bushes. Some of the products first on my list since the chances of winning the lottery are slim, are sippy cups and other plastic cups that are BPA free, safe plastic food containers, reusable towels for the kitchen (giving up paper towels is going to be a huge challenge for me), and safe lunch totes (I didn't even realize there was a concern with them until searching around today).

I saw a neat composting idea that I'm going to try out since I missed the free compost class put on by the Hillsborough County Extension Services. I was only going for the free composter but I watched this video today that showed a women saving her kitchen scraps in one of these and then once a week, they would dig a hole in the garden, dump the kitchen scraps in, and then cover it back up. I have no use for compost right now since I have no decent landscaping and my front garden is full of weeds but it would be awesome to recycle my kitchen scraps. I want a simple composter like the Earth Machine. I had one in Maryland but it didn't make the move. I got it free through the county I lived in.

There's lots more I can do around here to become a greener house. We've already done the basics of changing all the light bulbs, and we do recycle (although I hate Hillsborough County's recycling program) but I want to do more. If you know some easy and affordable ways to help save the environment, send them my way.

Family Day at the Beach

Don didn't have to work at Lowe's yesterday so we decided earlier in the week to go to the beach. My parents asked us on Wednesday if we wanted to go to the beach with them on Sunday. Coincidence?

We decided to go to Clearwater beach since my Dad said there was a storm brewing in the Gulf but it was supposed to stay south of us. I was a little worried driving to the beach because there were dark clouds everywhere. However, we didn't see one drop of rain on the way there, the whole time we were at the beach, or on the way home. It was overcast most of the time we were there but we all had a great time. I love the beach; I just wish it wasn't so much work! Here's some pictures of our day:

Don setting up the tent. See the dark clouds looming behind?

My Mom

My Dad

Making some changes around here...

I'm getting a little anxious to get my daycare set up. Now that all my classes are done, I have to concentrate on the house. There are things I need money for before I can do some things but I took it upon myself yesterday to start rearranging things. Originally, I was planning on buying another set of drawers for under Joshua's bed. However, the store we originally bought the bed from is no longer open plus we really can't afford to buy it anyway so I started brainstorming and came up with an idea. Shawn's closet is full of shelves to store toys and he had a bar at the bottom for his clothes and they were reachable for him at age 3. I decided to take out the bottom two shelves in his closet and move Joshua's dresser into the closet. Joshua would get the top two drawers and Shawn would get the bottom drawer. Now I have all of Joshua's clothes in the bedroom. Plus, I went through all of Shawn's and Joshua's clothes and pulled out all the clothes that no longer fit. Their bedroom is still a mess though but I'm hoping that once I start organizing the daycare room, I can finish organizing their room also. Taking away two shelves is a problem for storage in their room, lol. The daycare room is also mess right now. Filled with toys with no home. I need some organization!!!

Make some wishes come true...

Have you ever wanted to pay it forward? Here's an easy way to do it...I found this website through the FrogPond. It's called Wish Upon a Hero. Check it out!

You can grant a wish or request a wish. You can even request a wish for someone else. The wishes range from prayers and cards to money to pay for bills/repairs/clothes/food, etc.

I've already granted one wish. It was easy! I have offered to grant 3 others and I'll be looking at others to grant when I have time.

I've also requested a wish. Check it out here. Even if you can't help grant my wish (or want to, LOL) please at least view it. The more views I get the higher it will show. Thanks everyone!

Parade Booty

We got a ton of stuff from the parade but when I saw Karlise's post, I thought to myself "there is no way I'm counting all those beads", lol. However, today I was bored so I did count them. Here's what we got:

98 bead necklaces
4 mini Frisbees
1 spider ring
1 Navy pencil
2 Navy can koozie's
2 packages of flower seeds
2 mini maracas
1 mini beach ball
1 foam light bulb that Joshua bit the end off of
1 foam progressive insurance car
2 bracelets
2 Chick-fil-A coupons for a free kids size icedream
2 American flags
2 Dixie flags
6 bottles of water (thank you God since I forgot our cooler!)
1 ton of candy (even though we were constantly telling them we didn't want it)
1 newspaper
1 ton of advertisements
1 comic book (Don said it wasn't really an appropriate comic book for kids)

I think that's it. I'm pretty sure we still have stuff in the basket of our double camping chair but I think its mostly the advertisements.

Fireworks!

This was the first year we went to see the fireworks at the mall. My aunt went last year so she was kind of in charge of picking the spot to see them. She also got there earlier than us and saved us parking spots. However, as we were driving in, I saw where they were going to set them off. It was in the woods across from Macy's. I told the rest of the people and I decided I would drive in that area to see if I could find parking spots. I found a ton of parking spots together near the Cheesecake Factory and thought it would be a perfect spot to see the fireworks since there weren't any trees in the way. My Aunt and everyone else didn't want to move though so we ended up in the Toys r Us parking lot. Of course when the fireworks started, there were trees in the way, lol. It wasn't the best spot to see them but we could see most of them fine. I didn't say a thing but you can bet in my mind I was screaming "I told you so!". I thought getting out of there was going to be horrible and it probably would have been if we took the main road around the mall but Don is a pretty smart guy. We crossed over from TRU to the mall side and drive along the road hugging the mall. There was no traffic and we drove all the way over to Sears with absolutely no problems.

Happy B-day U.S.A.!!!

We are making the 4th of July parade a tradition. The kids were excited to go but Shawn acted bored the whole time. He did say he had a good time after we left though.

We were rushing around this morning and ended up leaving later than we wanted. I packed us a cooler with drinks and snacks and left it on the kitchen counter. Even worse than that, we weren't thinking (because we were in a hurry) and went down Lumsden instead of Rt. 60. Of course the road was closed off at Parsons so we ended up parking at Westminster and walking. That's both kids, a canopy tent, a double seated camping chair, 2 single camping chairs, and the diaper bag. We made it all the way up to All Persons Specialty Care and found us a spot. We noticed as we were walking up Parsons that there were cars driving on the opposite side of the street and we could have kicked ourselves. Oh well, lesson learned for next year, lol.

We did have one minor incident before the parade started...Joshua got attacked by some fire ants :( Luckily, it happened right before the parade started so the parade took his mind off the ant bites. Here are a few pictures of the parade:

What else you ask?

Since Andrea asked...We have to repair our fence (there are a few boards that need to be replaced and make sure there are no nails or staples sticking out), child proof the kitchen (right now we have it gated off but I'll be using the eat in kitchen part for meals), replace the kitchen gate (one of my kids broke it), I need to get a fire inspection done, and then a final house inspection.

The biggest part for me now is actually setting up the daycare room. It’s the biggest challenge because I need to buy some things for storage and we don’t really have the money right now. I’m hoping that I can stretch the $1,000 grant I’ll be getting from the YMCA to cover everything I want to get. Luckily, there isn’t too much in the toy area that I’ll need right away but I’ll need some cots, a child sized table and chairs, some small bookcases similar to these to store the toys, a bookcase or book rack to store the books, something like this to store diaper bags/diapers/wipes, a rug for the living room because that’s where they are going to be napping. I'll want to paint it of course.

I have to figure out how to get some shade in the back yard. We can always use the tent we use for the craft fairs but Don won’t want to keep it up overnight so I’m looking for something more permanent. Shade is required to get licensed. I may need to get a few more outdoor toys. I have to have 12 outside activities. So far I have 2 slides, a sandbox (that isn’t set up yet but at least I have one), a playhouse (that should count for at least 2 activities), a wagon, a ride on toy, and some balls. I'd like to get an easel for painting and I like this one but don't want to spend that much on it, lol. I have to call the woman in charge of the grant to let her know I'm done with my 30 hr. child care class and passed all the exams so we can move forward on the whole grant thing. Once I get the grant money spent, I'll be hitting the yard sales!

I passed!

So glad that's over with! The last test I took (Monday night) was tough. It was on rules & regulations but it had questions on first aid kits and other stuff. I guess that's covered in the rules and regs but not in our study guide, lol. I was sweating that one out for sure. Next up...5 hr. Early Literacy Training.

It's hard to believe that it's July already. Where did the time go? I don't really remember too much of June, lol. We are going to the 4th of July parade on Friday. The kids are excited about it. I'll have to do some pre-planning so we can have snacks to bring with us. My parents are supposed to come over our house late afternoon and then we'll head over to the pool for a little while (that's if it's not raining). Plans are to cook out on the grill for dinner then head up to the mall later for some fireworks. Shawn is really excited about that. Not sure how Joshua will do but I'm sure he won't be sleeping if we didn't go. There are plenty of people in our neighborhood that set fireworks off so whether or not we go to the mall, Joshua is sure to be awake.

If I only knew this before...

we saw Speed Racer. I found a cool new website through the Frog Pond. It's called Kids-in-Mind. It rates the different movies that are out by sexual content, violence, and profanity. There will be no more surprise middle fingers in the movies we see, lol. They will go into detail for each movie so you can see if it's something you would want your kid to see. I've already bookmarked this site. Enjoy.

My Blog is worth...

My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?