Snakes in the Grass.

We stayed over at a friends house due to crazy hot temperatures and our lack of AC. When we came back home I went out to check on my little garden, preparing myself for plants being nibbled off by our rampant deer. Suprisingly, none of my plants had suffered! However I found a gartner snake. He was stuck in my cucumber plant and the netting I have used to thwart the deer.


The poor thing had somehow wiggled his body through some of the holes and got himself so stuck and wriggled so hard that he had wripped scales off his body. He must have been there for awhile because the sores were dry looking.

The Hubster was at work, so I put on a long sleeved shirt, gloves and grabbed some scissors. AND, my camera. I put Izzy into a stroller so she would be crawling all over me while I cut the snake free. Erin held onto the camera while I attempted to free the creature.

Anytime I started to get too close to the sores and get the netting off the snake would thrash it's body all over the place. I felt sorry for him, being stuck and having some huge person come at him with scissors. He wiggled to much for me to do a throurgh job of getting all the netting off. And to be honest, I was too nervous to grab onto him and hold him down to get it all off.

Thanks for the big butt shot Erin. =)

I did my best and cut the netting off as close to his body as I could. Then we went back into the house to let the snake slither off if he so chose. When I went back out to check after the girls were in bed he was gone. Who knows if he will survive his wounds, or having some of the netting still on him. Good luck Mr. Snake!

Family Portrait.

Erin likes to draw our family on her little chalkboard in her bedroom. Usually there are only three people that get drawn. Mommy, Erin, and Izzy.

"Where's daddy?" I ask her.

"At work." She simply states.

I explained that daddy would really like to be in one of her family pictures too. So she drew this picture complete with a daddy. I emailed it to Scott at work and it made him very happy!

We had some very cloudy, rainy days right before and as our crab apple tree was blooming which was making it very hard to get a pretty picture of it. Finally some sun came through and I got a few pics. I love these trees so much, they are so gorgeous and smell amazing when they are blooming. Sure it only blooms for about a week, but that makes it more special.

I think pictures that are taken WITHOUT a flash look so much better. Izzy was playing by the patio door so I quickly grabbed my camera and set it up to not use a flash and started snapping away. She started coming straight for me right away...

And I got this good one too! Absolutely adorable!

On our way to a baby shower for our new nephew... I had just finished the knitted grey bunny stuffed animal and Erin was breaking it in for him. Such a good cousin!

Bathtub time! So much easier to have fresh and clean children when I can bathe them together! It is nice that Erin doesn't mind only have a few inches of water in there. Plus Izzy loves playing with Erin in the tub.

There used to be tub crayons in there, but they are long gone. Not the marks in my tub....just the crayons. Izzy carries them around in her mouth like a puppy. My cute little puppy!

CHEESE!

Easter 2010.

Erin understood the whole coloring eggs thing much better this year. I think she had the most fun with the stickers though.




We used the white crayon to write things on them before we colored. You never know if that is going to turn out or not. Our red color did not dissolve very well so we didn't get many good ones from that.



Of course a few stickers for the cheekers.






I hid Erin's Easter basket this year again, and she had a lot of fun finding it. I got her a new bucket to put her candy in because last years bucket turned into a puke bucket. Well...it was a nice size for Erin when she got sick. Something about a 3 year old hanging onto a 5 gallon bucket that just doesn't seem right!





Ummmm...can we say EXCITED!!!





Erin snapped a picture of Izzy and I that morning as well. Good thing she has learned to take pictures or I'm not sure there would be any of Izzy and I...or and of I at all!!



Chocolate bunny! Why don't these things taste better??!!

Hey! There's caramel in here....yes, yes there is.

My new griddle.

I have discovered this marvelous way to cook breakfast! I have wanted a griddle for sometime, but I have a hard time buying things if I can use something else I already have to the job done. However, the mish-mash of cooking breakfast and trying to get it all done at the same time so nothing gets cold is solved by this wonderful little griddle!

The
The warming drawer is so nice. Plus I have also discovered how magical it is to do bacon in the oven. You see I was under the assumption that bacon done in the oven was crispy. And crispy bacon is just wrong. Chewy. Nuf said.

I love my griddle. And once it is no longer 80+ degrees in my house at all times of the day...I will use it again.

Getting back on my bike.

Yes, it has been too long since I have posted. What's been holding me back?? Laziness. Also, I get annoyed with trying to get my pictures in the right order on this blog. I have to decide beforehand what pics I want and the order and then load them backwards! It is very hard to rearrange the pics. Annoying.

So I'm going to just start loading photos and splain' them as they appear. No particular order, which means less pressure on me, and more posts!

These pics are from March and April...

What a cute little grin.

Drool.

My little girl loves to be close to me.

Erin's new toy.

My first knitted stuffed animal project...Erin named him Pepsi. She names everything Pepsi, or Watery. However, when she says Pepsi, it sounds like Pesbi. So cute!

Erin loves to crawl into the crib with Izzy...Izzy loves it too!

Smootie Ring!

Izzy learned to roll over.

Cute chubby baby girl of mine!

Swimsuit and snowboots, makes sense to me mom.

A Woman's Heart.

The quickest way to a woman's heart is to love what she loves. When I see my hubby loving our babies, I melt. I am completely in love with our girls and they have captured my heart in a way that leaves no escape. So when the man that I chose to love, loves the babies that I can't help but love, I fall in love with him again.



Erin has started doing chores. As of now she loves to help, and I give her a dime when she does. When I do laundry I ask her to sort our her and Izzy's clothes. She thinks that she needs to "dive" into the pile to find them. I think she believes that she can dive in like she sees in cartoons, but at least she has fun.


Then she pretends that she is a baby and that is her crib. Such a great helper. . .now get off the clothes!! If she wasn't so cute...

Erin showing me her funny faces. Her nose is so chapped and raw from her recent cold. This one started out with croup at 1:30 am. She was having such a hard time breathing that Scott started up the car while I called the 24 hour nurse line. Thankfully, taking her outside in the cold air helped her breathe better. She slept with us the rest of the night just in case.

And as sisters should, Erin shared her cold with Izzy. So here Izzy is with her red, chapped nose. We got to skip the croup part with her! However, she did not sleep much when she was just starting this cold. She did better for a couple of nights sleeping with me, which allowed both of us to get some sleep.

Even with the snot, she is still so happy. No teeth yet, but hopefully that one that has been giving her so much trouble comes through soon!

Here is our fireplace.

There is no fire in it.

There are ashes and. . .

A huge mountain of snot-filled tissues.

Good for kindling I suppose, but gross to think about how much mucus is in there!

What I do everyday.

I feed the children, and clean up the kitchen. Rinse and repeat three times a day. My hands are chapped from having my hands in water so many times a day. Hands in the water to get the washcloth ready to wipe faces and hands, wipe up the table, wipe up counters, and doing dishes that don't wash well in the dishwasher. When we get to remodel the kitchen I am seriously thinking about installing two dishwashers. One for plates and cups and such. The other for pans and heavy duty stuff.



I don't buy many other cereals besides Kix and Cheerios. I am not able to get past how much sugar is in everything else! I do buy some over-sugared cereal once in awhile and let Erin have it in moderation. However, I find that when the supa-sugar cereal is had for breakfast she gets hungry again fairly quickly which leads to more food prep, feeding, and cleaning up.

I do find it odd that there is a generic for nearly EVERY cereal out there, but not Kix. Hmmmm....very interesting.

This is my stress relief. Not just bread necessarily, but baking and cooking. These beautiful loaves of bread were so so very good, that I was sorry that I have a freezer of bread from the bread store. These are incredibly easy and cheap to make. They taste so much better than store bought bread. Also, they are full of wheat flour and flax seed. Flax seed is a great source of Omega 3's! I used a recipe from another blog that I read. the Frugal Girl http://www.thefrugalgirl.com/2009/03/wednesday-baking-whole-wheat-bread/

I adjusted the recipe to make three loaves because I have three bread pans. =)



I also like to embark on culinary adventures. Trying things that I haven't attempted before. Since I have mastered the White Wine Cream Sauce (which gave me some trouble for a long time) I have turned my focus to the baking world. The baking world seems to be a lot more temperamental than the cooking world.

Pictured above is my first Lemon Meringue Pie from scratch. I was surprised how very few ingredients are used in this pie! Basically the only thing I needed to buy was lemons! The biggest trouble I had was pre-baking the pie crust. Having never done it before I took the pie weights out too soon and when it went back into the oven, it slumped....a lot. It still tasted good and the rest of the pie hid my slouchy crust.


Some of my trees! I love having oodles and oodles of trees that I own. Our first house had 2, which is a good amount when you live in town. It just boggles my mind to think that I can't count how many trees I have here. I absolutely LOVE it and feel so very fortunate and lucky to have what we have at 30 years old.

We had a week where there was such dense fog at night that this is what our landscape looked like in the morning. A frosty wonderland....gorgeous!

This is one of Scott's favorite things to do with our babies...rock with them. Especially in front of a fireplace. It is the one place he can get Erin to sit still, and Izzy loves to watch the flames dance while being snuggled. If he can swing it he'll put the legs up and snooze with them. However, that is a near impossibility with Erin. That girl never sits still. ONCE and only once since she passed infancy has she fallen asleep rocking with Daddy. I came downstairs to have him nod his head toward her. She sleepily opened her eyes and asked me to put her in her bed.

Izzy has started on solid food! She wasn't too sure of it at first, but she has really warmed up to the idea. Once she got the hang of not pushing it all out with her tongue that is!

I like to make my own baby food. I think it is fun, inexpensive, and I know there aren't any weird things in it. I just made sweet potatoes today and Izzy adored them at first bite. I put a little on a spoon, and into her mouth. She just looked at me and smiled and opened her mouth wide for every bite after that.

I steam the veggies/fruit because it leaches vitamins and minerals the least. Then I put them in the food processor and add as much liquid from the steaming pot as needed to get the right consistency. Once it looks good to me I pour it into ice cube trays, freeze, then pop them out into freezer bags. I just have to nuke one or two cubes and it's ready!

Erin was under the blanket, and when she came out this is what I saw! She had snitched one of Izzy's pacis and was checking it for quality control.

Erin has always been weird about toys. She hasn't and doesn't really play with traditional toys that much. Instead she grabs onto the most interesting things and decides they are her play things. Like this pop-up hamper. She LOVES this thing. She uses it like you would use a sack in a sack race, jumps into it, and . . .

puts it on her head and runs around in it.

Izzy's "I'm not so sure about this solid food thing mommy" face.

So far she seems to be a more energetic eater than Erin was. Let's hope it stays that way!

Matching outfits from Christmas. They look adorable in them.

I like noticing how different they are. Erin has white, very sensitive skin. Izzy seems to have a perma-tan and has barely had any diaper rash at all! Her skin tone is a lot like her Uncle Ben's. Must be the Croatian coming out.

If you can't tell...Izzy loves her big sister like crazy. She watches her all the time and want to grab her and gnaw on her. Erin handles is all pretty well, sometimes getting annoyed, but overall does really well with Izzy. I'm proud of my girls!