Trying to tell me something???

I took the kids to the grocery store the other day. I turned my back to them while I looked for tortilla chips and when I turned back to the cart I found about 4 boxes of these in there.
So it makes me wonder if my children are trying to tell me I need to cut back on calories. Well, just to spite them I picked up an extra bag of these...just for me. :)

Otter Pops, Otter Pops

How would we survive summer without you??? There are so many great things about the otter pop that makes it better than your average popsicle. For example. An ordinary popsicle drips. And when it drips, what does it drip on??? That's right, your hand. Otter pops are contained in a plastic tube like thing so all the drips accumulate at the bottom. So when you finish the the oh so fabulous frozen portion, you have an inch and a half of sugary goodness to drink from the bottom. I am a big fan. Mike thinks the melted juice at the bottom is way to sweet. Not me. I try to suck every last drop out of that sucker! And the kids LOVE these things. Some kids eat popsicles really slow, so before they can finish the popsicle is falling apart and they are losing chunks all over the place. But not with these. Again, all contained in cool plastic tube thingy. And the flavors they have are awesome. I get mine from Walmart and they have flavors like pina colada and passion fruit along with the usual blue, purple, red, orange and green. Oh the simple little pleasures in life. Isn't it great!

So ugly, I like it!

Saturday I decided it was time to hang some pictures on the walls. In our last house, it took me a couple years before I got around to hanging stuff up. This time I decided to get on the ball and just get it done. I really like creative wall groupings, (I googled this one)

and decided to try one out for myself. I had a large family picture, some smaller pictures of the kids, a couple collage frames with pics of the kids, the Family Proclamation, and a picture of the temple. I started with the big family picture and went from there. As I finished hanging the last picture and took a step back to survey my masterpiece I was horrified at what I saw. In fact, I couldn't stop myself from saying out loud, "Oh my!! That's AWFUL!!!". It was the most terrible arrangement of pictures I had ever seen. Unfortunately, I couldn't change it right then, because the kids were screaming for lunch.

The wall between the kitchen and dining room has a big open window, so while I was making lunch for the kids I had a perfect view of this group of pictures. And like a train wreck, I just couldn't stop myself from looking at it. My eyes just kept finding there way back to that wall, and much to my surprise, the more I looked at it, the more I LIKED it. I am now to the point where I really want to keep it like it is. It's totally grown on me. Mike still isn't a fan. In fact, he keeps pointing out ways that I can change it to make it look better. Maybe one day I will change it, but for now I'm keeping it like it is. I'm not even going to post a picture of it. It's like people that decide on a weird name for their baby, so they don't tell anybody what it is because they don't want to here what a bad name it is. Ya, kinda like that. Sorry to disappoint you all. :)

M*A*S*H

My dad used to watch this show all the time and I hated it. The theme song drove me crazy and I guess I just didn't get what it was all about. Then I read the lyrics to the theme song and it bugged me even more. "Suicide is painless"???? I remember thinking, "ya, painless compared to watching this lame show!"

When we moved here we decided to get satellite which now allows me to watch the hallmark channel. On this channel I get to watch back to back reruns of Little House On The Prairie and M*A*S*H. At first I wasn't real excited about M*A*S*H, but one evening I was bored and decided to watch it. I laughed through the whole thing!!! It was hilarious. I watch it every day now. It's so funny. I never picked up on the humor the few times I watched it with my dad. I had no idea what I was missing out on. Is this a sign I'm getting old?

WAKE UP DAD!!

As I mentioned before, this has been a busy month for Mike. The kids don't get to spend much time with him any more. Jacob saw a picture of Mike on the computer and says, "Bye Dad. See a later. Bye. Yuv you, Dad". I guess cause when he does get to see him, he's either leaving or going to bed. haha. Anyhoo, he was on call last Saturday and didn't' get home until Sunday afternoon. Both kids had coughs and we didn't go to church, so we actually got to see him when he got home. He played with the kids for a little while, and then went to bed. He had been asleep for a few hours when I heard "WAKE UP DAD! WAKE UP!! DAD! WAKE UP!! I had my hands full at the time so I couldn't go stop him from waking him up, but I guess he just eventually gave up. lol. Poor kid. He just didn't understand why his dad was asleep in the middle of the day instead of up playing with him!! Hello!

It's a cat. No, it's a dog. No...

it's just the worlds biggest pine cone!! Seriously, look at it. It's as big as Jacob's head. It's been sitting in our front yard for the past week or so, and every time I look out the window I think, "hey, there's an animal in our yard. Oh wait, no, it's just that pine cone". So yesterday when Mike was out grilling our dinner we took the kids out there and investigated the thing. It is currently sitting on my fireplace mantel. I plan to make some sort of center piece with it. Actually, I may just save it and use it as our Christmas tree. It's big enough. :)

Good Reads???

Okay, I got some really good movie suggestions. Now how 'bout some book suggestions. I'm looking to build my collection. I'm not real into Harry Potter or those sorts of books. Weird I know. But I'm open to most other suggestions.

PS, I'm already have an account on goodreads.com and occasionally peruse my friends books on there. But that is time consuming. I'm just looking for a few of your favorites to look into. :)

Missing

1 million cookie reward for his safe return.

So it begins. The life of the married, single mother. We rarely see Mike anymore. He leaves before we wake up and gets home just in time to eat dinner and go to bed. This morning he left his usual time, only he's on call, so we won't see him until tomorrow after we get home from church. I'm not looking forward to dealing with the kids on my own at church. BUT, I need to suck it up, because half my ward is Moms doing it alone while their husbands are over seas. I am grateful I'm not doing it alone every week. At least no yet.

Movie Recommendations???

My Queue list is getting a little short. But I'm a little out of it when it comes to movies. So if anyone has any family friendly movie recommendations that would be awesome! TIA :)

Hey There Dililah (I'm at the MTC)

It was no Richfield 4th of July...

But we still had lots of fun. We planned to go to a parade, but Mike had to work that morning and didn't end up getting home in time, and I didn't feel like battling with two kids in the hot sun by myself. That's assuming I would have found my way there without getting lost in the first place. So, instead I made sugar cookies and we frosted them. We did it the easy way. We just dipped them in swirled red, white and blue frosting for a very cool tie-dyed look.
Jacob had fun just making a mess.

And eating the frosting.

He wasn't real interested in the actual cookie. Lizzie on the other hand wasn't real interested in the frosting. She just wanted to eat the plain cookie. And she ate LOTS of them.

We saved some for Mike. He just ate the cookies as he dipped.
The tie-dyed cookies may just have to become a 4th of July tradition from here on out. They were fun to do.

In keeping with a Chidester tradition we dressed the kids up in 4th of July outfits. (Does that dress look familiar Colleen? Thanks again!)

Later Mike grilled us up some awesome steaks. They were so, so, so good.

Sunday night we made these...

Watermelon (virgin) margaritas. They would have gone perfectly with the steaks, but unfortunately I didn't think of it until the next day. I decided these too will be a 4th of July tradition from now on. They were so amazingly good. I like them even better than regular margaritas. And you know how much I love those. :)

Mike's weekend extended through today. So we decided to take a trip up to Raleigh and check things out. We spent most of the day at the mall. They had a fun little play area that the kids played on for HOURS! haha. They had so much fun. I actually did the driving. I was so proud of myself. :) And can I just say, NC drivers know how to drive!!! I felt like I was in Utah again. People actually reached 80mph speeds! It was awesome! It made me happy.

Wondering what to do with all those boxed up photos??

Well, wonder no more. I recently discovered that my friend Amber takes peoples boxed up photos, organizes them and puts them in to albums for you!! Such awesomeness. Now, all my photos that I've had packed away, with the intention of one day doing something with them, can now be displayed. haha. I will now be able to pull out my mission pictures and wedding photos and look at them in a nice album instead of having to juggle stacks of loose photos. She is also taking care of some of my digital photos. I have so many photo's on my computer. I may keep her in business single-handedly. haha. If you would be interested in having her take care of your boxed up photos and backed up digitals, let me know. SHE CAN HELP YOU!! And she does this service for a very reasonable price. Thanks Amber. Your a life saver. The end.

Almost There

I think I may almost be done. I have the kitchen, living room, bathrooms, and master bedroom ALL PUT TOGETHER, and CLEAN!!! The only room I need to work on now is the office. It's going to be a major project. It ended up being the catch all room. Anything that we didn't know what to do with we stuck in there. I need to figure out a place to store stuff. I hesitate to put anything out in the garage because of all the spiders. I have sprayed several times out there, and I am still finding them. Big ones and baby ones. I've killed two wolf spiders in there. Those suckers are just big, hairy and scary!! Not quite as frightening as huntsman spiders, but still pretty scary. I was hoping that after that pipe broke and flooded the garage that it would have washed them all away. But noooooo. They must know how to swim.



Anyhoo...I am now rewarding myself with some fun wall art for the living room. I think I have settled on this one. I'm very excited. Eventually I plan to purchase this cute little hutch. Only I will not be ruining it's cutenees by placing my ugly microwave on it. :) But that will have to wait another month or two.
The only thing that would make this funner is if I could rip down all the wall paper and paint. We have some pretty hideous wall paper in this place. Kinda makes me wish we would have bought instead of rented. One day, one day. :)