I get by with a lil help from my friends

I seriously didn't need help cleaning out the hamster cage but I guess Gunner & Ozzy thought it would be fun. mwahahaha. Thanks, but no thanks guys, I can handle it own my own.
(and i'm sure the hamster thanks me too!)


Today was one of those days that could go either way, depending on Momma's mood. Lucky for my kids I woke up in a great mood. I so badly wanted to get the camera out to document it. It was one of those mornings that was pure Chaos. All 4 of us were in the kitchen at the same time. Duane making coffee, finding his "stuff" to take with him, putting on his boots, me making lunches and breakfast and snacks for courtneys reward day, and writing checks for lunch $, the kids eating and getting shoes on, brushing hair, finding all their school stuff. 1/2 the drawers and cabinets were hanging open as we all rushed around. The dog saw me get the PB out so he ran to get his ball that you fill with PB and was following me around until I did what he wanted. We were all tripping over the cat as he played with some toy that courtney left lying around and he kept getting it stuck under the stove. And I felt absolutely happiness. I knew as soon as everyone left I would be able to clean up the mess and all would be quite around the house, well after the dog and cat settled down. And right now, the cat is on my lap purring and the dog is by my feet sleeping. Pure bliss! And I still haven't cleaned up the kitchen yet LOL The kids will be home in a few hours and we can start the chaos all over again :-)

Sledding

Snow days are for sledding!!!

Courtney & Maddie went sledding at Grandma & Grandpa Marshall Sunday. If we could get over there today they would have a blast cuz there's oooodles of snow on the ground now. Every time I take the dog out to pee I get snow down my boots :-(

blizzard of OZ

Kitty finally has a name. OZZY. By day he's Ozzie Nelson, but at night he's Ozzie Osbourne. How can one little cat can make such a raucous? He actually pounced on my face last night-I guess I must have blinked or something. But about 1am I rolled over and found him stretched out in the 2 inch crack between my pillow and duane's pillow, he had his front legs over his head and his back legs all the way back--he looked like someone had him stretched out on a torture device. I have never wanted to get up and take a pic in the middle of the night so badly- it was soooo funny. The pics are from the other day when the sun actually decided to say hello. Oz played in the sunny patch on the steps for a good hour. I love the look he's giving courtney's orange stuffed cat, "why are you wearing clothes dude?"

Gunner was getting a little jealous of the photo shoot that the cat was having.............



So he walked up the steps and sat in the sunny patch until I took his picture too! LOL

find of the day

I've been looking for something really rustic for the mantle so i love the window pane mirror i found at a antique shop downtown. and the pepsi crate - i'm planning on using as a shelf somewhere, maybe for cd's or dvd's. The black & white polkadot rainboots weren't found in an antique shop, but the cat seems to like them :-)

baby in the house

Guess what Duane brought home for Valentine's Day??? A kitten :-) I really REALLY didn't want any more pets, the dog and hamster were plenty, but daaaaaang he's so cute I couldn't be mad. And look at those beautiful blue eyes. Awwww! So far he's a no-name, we're still working on that. Courtney wants Dongwa, I want Dexter. Cody wants Yoshi (which I like too). And Duane wants Atticus or Lenny. Lenny!? how about squiggy? LOL

Wanna have lunch???

Alisha and I had lunch together yesterday!!!! via the webcam at the panama city pier :-) The pics didn't come out very good because i didn't have time to adjust the setting on my cam to take a pic of the laptop screen, but you get the gist. The stupid thing is we were both so excited about having lunch together while we are 943 miles apart----can you imagine if we had webcams? After getting off the phone I thought about it....duh! people do this alllll the time with the webcams on the computers and don't have to drive to the pier to see each other. LOL!!!!

If it had been warmer she could have sat on a bench (if the birds didn't take her hostage) while we ate and chatted on our phones. The funny thing is the people in the cars around her probably thought she was nuts cuz she kept getting out of the car and waving at me LOL ;-)

curtains? who needs them?!

Who needs curtains when you've got freezing rain!?

I wonder if the person that invented privacy film for windows lived in ohio and got inspiration from the sleet hitting their windows? it's really pretty to look at but i am so sick of it!!!

oops

oops i did it again, but this time it was for moi :-)

hey at least it was a good sale. 11 sweaters, 3 purses

(and 2 pairs of boots for courtney) for under $100

it's a chicken night

Chicken stew: I'm not much for following recipes, I like dumping. SO.... here's what I dumped in the pot: chicken broth, 3 shredded chicken breasts, fresh parsley, parsnips, carrots, spinich, red onions, green onions, sweet potatoes, white potatoes & black beans. and greek seasoning. Basically anything that looked like it could be put in stew. Of course i knew that courtney wouldn't touch it but the rule is "you eat what I make" so I saved some of the chicken out for her to eat as nuggets, with uncooked carrots and some potatoes i took out of the stew. The lil vermit wouldn't even try the chicken nuggets, even tho i used her fav cereal to bread them :-(

breakfast

yummy breakfast! banana, strawberry, spinich,
yogart, wheatgerm, blueberry & mango smoothie
flaxseed pancakes, turkey sausage & spinich scrambled eggs
well 3 of us enjoyed this. Courtney would only eat the sausage. I swear if it's greasy, she's drawn to it! It's like she has some high grease, high sodium radar implanted in her. (or she's just being a kid) Since I've been making more of an effort to eat better, when I do eat crap food, it now makes me sick. Over the weekend we had pizza (i only order chicken, but i still didn't feel so well), no chips, duane still buys sodas but he's the only one drinking them. I only eat one piece, 2 at the most and if I get hungry I go make a smoothie or eat fruit/veggies. Doing good so far. Except when we went to cleveland on Saturday and I had a few sips of soda cuz they made me throw away my water at the door :-( We didn't have time for dinner on the way up there so we grabbed what we could find while Duane was gassing up the car. Duane wasn't hungry, had he been hungry I'm sure we would have found time for dinner :-( The kids were more than happy to be allowed to pick out their own junk food. I found a ....... banana & circus peanuts LOL ok that's not exactly healthy is it? So I am now going to go research "eating healthy at a gas station"

ah ha I'm not alone in my search for what to eat while on the road..............
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/healthy-eats-at-a-gas-station/

Martina Mcbride Concert

Went to Cleveland Saturday night to see Martina Mcbride, Jack Ingram & Lady Antebellum. I put some of their songs on a player at the bottom of the blog :-)