This and That

The last couple of days I have been putting together a hair blog!! I was totally inspired by all those hair bloggers out there, I have tried so many of their styles and I sure that some will appear on my blog but I have so many of my own ideas and I thought it would be great to show them all off. Click on this Goldielocksandher2girls check it out! I just started so I only have a couple of styles on there so far,but there are lost more to come I will also start posting my hair bows that I make and stuff.

Moving on to the family, today while the younger kids took there naps I took a 2 hr bath!! OH SO NICE. I don't get to do that very often and it was wonderful, I actually fell asleep!! As I was getting out of the bath my oldest came in and started talking to me about random things(she is such a talker), when I was drying of she pointed to my tummy and said "you's need to get 2 babies in there" I of course was surprised! I said "oh really you want to have more brothers and sisters?" she replied with "not sisters just brothers!" Well that kinda surprised me cause I know she absolutely adores her baby sister so I asked her " why is that?", she put her hands on her hips let out a deep sigh and said " I want more brothers for buddy(Kaleb), so that he will leave me alone!! He needs brothers to play with I don't like to wrestle any more it messes up my hair!!!". Such a silly girl, had Kaleb heard that he may have been a little offended. =)

When Ellie got sick she created a domino affect. After she got sick Marryne came down with a pretty bad cold bad enough that she hasn't had a voice for the last 3 days and( even though the silence has been enjoyable =)) we would like for her to get better. Today Kaleb woke up with a runny nose fever and cough and he is now voice less! (again the lack of yelling and talking is nice!) Hope fully it won't last long he is super cranky when he is sick. Luckily Dana and I aren't' sick but I figure it's just a matter of time, the last couple weeks I have been "burning the candle at both ends" as my hubby would say. I haven't been getting a lot of sleep part of it has to do with the fact that I have been staying up till midnight or 1 every night just to spend some alone time with my hubby, but the other part is taking care of the kids in the night. Usually Ellie is the first to wake up and of course she cries and wakes up the other kids (it's the domino effect all over again!). So needless to say I haven't had much energy lately, I struggle just to keep up with the house work, on that note we got the kids new chore charts finished!! And they are working great the kids woke up this morning excited to go to work!! So all in all everything has been ok, Ellie is finally getting better now I just to get the other 2 back on there feet!!

Laughter, Nails and Hair!

I stayed home from church today with the girls. Ellie is still running a fever, not to mention she is miserable because of the double ear infection she has. Marryne woke up coughing and she says she has a sore throat, so despite her protests I decided to keep her from church today. She was pretty sad about it and she absolutely loves her Sunday school teacher, so after the boys left (and since the house was clean) we pulled out everything we would need for a fun filled afternoon of playing Salon! I did Ryne's hair and nails, we laughed and talked about random things it was so much fun. I even let her have a Popsicle for her sore throat =). I loved just sitting and being with her, Ellie slept through the entire afternoon! There are times when Ryne really craves my attention and I am not always able to give it to her without it being divided to the other kids, the dog and my hubby! So it was nice to let her talk to me she told me about things that make her happy and sad, and about all the people that she likes, she told me how much she loves having "momma time", and that she likes it when I do her hair "sometimes". She loves her brother, but doesn't always like the way he acts or the things he does, she loves her sister even though she cries and poops a lot because she knows that that's what babies do, she loves her daddy because they go on outings together and he takes her swimming a lot and when he gets mad at her she know it's because he loves her and wants her to be safe, she loves Hershey(the dog) because she keeps Ryne warm at night, and she loves Jesus because he loves her and she is a Child of God even though she can't see him she knows he is always there! What a wonderful day this was to here her speak of these things. Sometimes I have my days were I wonder "Why do I even try!?"sometimes it's at church and other times it just a normal day, but then I have days like this when it is very clear why! =)

Refuge

After we got back from doing some evening shopping last night we laid the kids down and sat down to enjoy a movie together, and the power went out! It came back on and we resumed watching only to have the power go out again, this time for good. I am not usually one to panic in situations like this but, I did now I don't know if it was because we had just finished watching Knowing a few hrs earlier and all I could see in the pitch black was the creepy "whisper people", or what is was but I seriously started freaking out! I was on the floor and my hubby was across the room feeding Ellie, crawling on my hands and knees I finally found him! It was super dark I mean pitch black can't see your hand in front of your face black! I sat there on the floor with my hand on Dana's lap trying to breathe and calm myself down, I try looking around thinking that my eyes will adjust and I will be able to see better, but they don't and I can't! The flashes from the lightening are making it even more difficult because I was getting super dizzy. Luckily for us Kaleb has been wanting a flash light in his room for the last few nights, so it's on and Dana tells me to go get it, I can't even move! I have no idea what I was afraid of but I couldn't get on my feet to get the flash light, so Dana hands me the baby and stands up so he can go get the flash light, again I was so scared I didn't want him to leave me even for a second! The lights flickered for a second and the cordless phone lit up across the room, I figured it was better than nothing and ran across the room and grabbed it before the light went out! I figured it was as good as a flash light at least I wasn't in complete darkness! Once I had my little light I let Dana go into Kaleb's room and get the light.

I felt a little better once we had a couple of sources of light. The kids had gotten into our flash lights so all we had was 2 the one we were using and another one but the batteries were dead. So we stumble around until we find some batteries, great now we have 2 working lights (besides the 3 cordless phones!). We figure now would be a good time to find the matches and light some candles, the only thing was is we couldn't find the matched to light our 1 candle! I told Dana that there were some in the computer/storage room, of course they are in the camping box at the bottom of the pile so we dig until we find them. Yeah we have a candle and 2 flashlights one of which is starting to die! I remembered I had a bag of tea light candles so I dug those out and we had them all over the house! I felt much better after that. The whole time we were trying to find the lights Ellie was screaming!! Once we had the lights and candles I changed the batteries in the swing and she was pretty good after that. Now it's Arizona and it's hot even at night so it wasn't long before the house started to get warm. We decided to open the windows since it was raining and windy we figured that air flow even if it is hot it better than nothing. It really wasn't that bad once we got the windows open we could see that half the neighborhood was in the street talking and stuff, I went out to say hi and to see how our elderly neighbor Doreen was doing and I also remembered that there was a flash light in the car! Every one seemed to be doing fine. Doreen mentioned that she noticed it took us awhile to get some lights and candles. I full of laughter shared my story and mentioned that the one big candle we had was almost done burning and all we had left was the tea light which were going fast! She went into her house and came out with some bigger candles!! How nice is that!? I told her to let us know if she needed anything to let us know.

Back at home I remembered our battery camping lantern, found it and replaced the batteries, so we had a bigger source of light and didn't need to rely on the candles that kept going out because of the open windows, and we could save the smaller lights for walking around the house. When we were out shopping I needed to get some batteries for Ellie's swing, it takes 4 D's. When I picked up the batteries I was compelled to get 2 more packages than I needed. At first I thought we will be fine, we aren't going to need than right away anyway but something kept telling me to get a couple more packages. So I went back and picked some more up figuring that it would be good to have spare ones just in case! When I found the camping lantern and realized that it took 4 D batteries! I was so grateful that I listened to that feeling to buy more than I needed, I could have used the ones from the baby swing but it was the only thing that was calming her down so I wouldn't have wanted to do that. I know that something was preparing me for the power outage, even though I didn't know it at the time. I am just glad that I didn't continue to ignore the prompting. =)

I am glad that the older kids slept threw the whole thing as well. It would have been a lot tougher if they had been awake. Once we had our lanterns and candles we sat in the living room on the floor around the coffee table, Dana read a book and I was busy making the kids chore charts. It was so quiet and nice, just sitting there being together with no t.v., phone or any other distractions. We talked a little but mostly just enjoyed how serene it all was. I could hear the wind blowing with vengeance, I could see the trees bending and thrashing in the wind, and I could hear our welcome sign hitting the front door. But inside it was so peaceful, we had a nice breeze going through the house, but other than that it was quiet and peaceful a refuge from the storm. Sitting there in the dark allowed me to just sit and think a lot of memories flooded my head. Some distant but other's close some good some bad. I'm sure many of you have heard people compare our life to a storm, how sometimes feels like everything is out of control grabbing in the dark for someone to hold on to, for someone that will help you. There were many times in my life were I have felt that way, were it has seemed that it's never going to pass, like things are never going to get better. But if we listen and ask there is someone there and He is more than willing to help us. Heavenly Father will send people into our lives that will help us when we need them to, like when Dana talked to me in the dark until I found him, and how my neighbor gave me some candles to help light the way through our home. We are never alone, I am so grateful for that and for all the people in my life. I honestly feel like each and everyone of you have a purpose in my life, we may not know what it is but I do believe that we all help even when we don't know that we are. I feel so blessed that my Father in Heaven has given me these wonderful people and the knowledge that with help I can over come anything, with faith and love he is my "refuge from the storm."

Giveaway!!

Most of you know that I absolutely love hair and hair accessories. I have been getting so many great ideas from a number of hair blogs that I have been following and one of them is doing an awesome giveaway go to surgarandspiceandallhairnice.blogspot.com and see all the cool stuff she has on her blog. It' so awesome and she also has some of the cutest hair styles ever. Check it out!! Oh yea and here is the latest hair style it's called a fish bone braid! I added my own little stuff in the front just to keep the hair out of Ryne's eyes! We really like this one I love this braid cause it is very unique!

Hair Hair Hair!!

So here's another style I tried on Marryne's hair today. It was pretty fast and easy and it has kept the hair out of Ryne's eyes and off her neck! Yeah for that, it's just to darn hot to have down. I got the idea from a hair blog GirlsCurls, I didn't do it exactly like what I saw but I think I did pretty good. Braids are always easy and quick and Marryne really likes the way her hair is after we take out the braids so anyway here it is!

Made in China!

Last night Marryne made us laugh, she is just the funniest little thing sometimes. It started when I pulled all of the kids toys out of the closet and sorted through them, some got thrown away and others got donated. In doing this the kids found some long lost toys and stuffed animals, among them were some little stuffed bunnies from a couple of Easter's ago. Marryne just loves stuffed animals especially bears, bunnies and cats. Anyway she had been playing with these bunnies for awhile and was loving it, after dinner she brought them over to Dana and this is how the conversation went:

Marryne: " Dad, what do this says?"

Dana: " It says made in china!"

Marryne takes the bunny back and then exclaims " Whoa!! I didn't knowed we buyed this in China!!"

Now every times she talks about wanting to go buys something it's no longer "we need to go to the store to buy this toy." it's "we need to go to China to get me this toy.!!"

We have tried explaining it to her but she still doesn't seem to grasp the concept. She will understand someday!! This really made my day yesterday even today as I think about it makes me smile.

Never Ever!!!

I found out today that you can bake bread in a crock pot on the stove!!! How is this possible you ask!? Well have I got a story for you, this afternoon I decided that I wanted to have some nice home made bread to go with my jam, simple you would think because I have made bread lot's of times, yeah well today it wasn't so simple. It all started when I could find my recipe! (yeah I know I shouldn't need a recipe, but I haven't made it in awhile and I wanted to be sure and not guess!) I finally found it at the bottom of my recipe book cupboard all crinkled up! So now I have the recipe I get everything out and got started. I put the yeast in the water with the sugar to make sure it is still good, while I was talking to Dana about the phone conversation I just had with my mom about my brother breakin his arm (that's a whole other story!=)) Marryne decided she was going to help and she promptly pour a 1/4 CUP of salt into the mixture, not only is that WAY to much salt but it also killed my yeast!! So no big deal, I dump it (much to Dana's disappointment that it got wasted. Sorry hun!!) and started again, this time I measured and put in all of the ingredients(cause Marryne was banned from the kitchen =()and I forgot the salt!! No big deal that's happened before and the bread has been just fine plus I am going to mix it with more dough anyway to do a double batch. So when I mixed the second batch I made sure I put in the salt, kneaded the dough and put it in the crock pot pot (glass or stone is better to rise dough than plastic or metal.) and set in on the stove and out of the way to rise. I am in and out of the kitchen and the dough is rising beautifully, we sit down to eat dinner and I figure after we are done eating I will make the loafs and put them in the oven. I pull the crock pot off the stove and it feels a little warm, but it was on the stove and the stove was hot cause we just got done cooking dinner so I don't think anything about it until I put my hand in the dough and find that it is very HOT. The top of the dough was fine I managed to pull enough out to make 1 loaf of bread, but the bottom half was cooked I mean really cooked, it was nice and brown on the bottom!! So still you are askin how in the world did it get cooked!? And my answer to that would be some advice NEVER EVER put the bowl of dough on the burner were the heat from the stove comes out!! That is what I did. I found all of this really funny I think someone out there really didn't want me to have home made bread with my homemade jam!! It does make me wonder though, I wonder if I could cook a pizza in the crock pot! I think I feel an experiment coming on!!! =)