Hey Lis, this one's for you!

After reading my blog for the first time, my friend Lisa spent quite a bit of time making fun of my pantry. This is the same Lisa who calls me when she's crying because she knows I'll cry with her and whose deck I happily scraped for two afternoons this summer. And I'll have you know that she is not an unorganized person and therefore has no business making fun of me! Weeeeellll, tonight she had the nerve to mention that it had been awhile since I posted anything. Um, yeah. That's because you made fun of me. So without further ado, here I go. All for you Lis!



Every Tuesday in the summer there are concerts in the park downtown and in all my years in this town I have never been. So today, we went and it was fun! There were tons of people and the sun was out and the band (although not the music of the 80's and 90's as advertised) was spunky. The park is right on the water so it was fun to look at all of the boats coming in to listen and when we went down to the dock to look for jellyfish we were surprised to find that there were touch tanks set up with starfish and crabs and various other sea life for the kids to pet. We were even more surprised to see the scuba divers who were bringing all of the stuff up from under the dock!



Here's a quick glimpse of the evening...

At some point my kids decided that they wanted to take pictures so I turned the camera over to them and they had fun playing paparazzi, telling everyone to say "cheeeeeese". If nothing else, it is artistic. Right?

Here is a friend of a friend (Holly?)

and this is Lachlan

Heidi

Me

Lisa

Abby

Megan

and Ben

Sooooo, if any of you are planning a wedding and looking for a good photographer, look no further!

There Lis, are you happy? A new post just for you. And before you say anything let me just say that there are a lot more pictures where these came from so you may want to choose your words wisely!

Friday Fun Night

Friday evening, as I channel surfed for the third hour in a row I came across a little piece of reality genius called "Jerseylicious". I am a sucker for reality t.v. and for whatever reason I had never seen this one before. Well, it was entertaining, but after a number of years with a DVR I am so not into watching commercials so I paused the t.v. and decided to go, wait for it.....organize my pantry! Fun, right?



When we designed the house a walk-in pantry was high on my list of must haves. In our previous house we had a grand total of six cabinets in which we kept all of our dishes AND our food. Cereal on top of the plates, pasta inside pots and pans...you get the picture, it was NOT pretty!



Those who know me well know that I love to organize and I love nothing more than an organized area. I like to just sit and look at things that are nice and neat and where they go. I know it is a bit crazy and OCD but so am I and it makes me happy so back off! I also like to have plenty of everything on hand. I want to have a backup (or 8) in case I wake up in the morning and there is no shampoo/toilet paper/cereal. So now that I have a house with plenty of storage and my big pantry I am able to buy a lot of stuff on sale so that I have it when I need. Yeah, I clip coupons...lots of them. Laugh if you want but today I got $262 of groceries for $128.



Anyway...back to the pantry. I have a lot of food and it was already pretty tidy, but with 47 minutes left in my new favorite show I had some time to fix it up a bit. How do you think I did?

I'll give you a quick photo tour of my pantry. First, my stool so I can reach almost all the shelves. The kids think that it is so they can get their own jellybeans down...those got moved in the reorganization!

Yeah yeah yeah...I know that's a lot. It gets me through the day, what do you want me to say?

Sauces!

Both Robbie's mom and my mom are on gluten free diets so they have claimed this shelf as their own. Hey, they watch my kids whenever I ask. It's the least I can do.

Canned and boxed goods.

Chips and snacks that are unopened.

Pasta supplies. We like our spaghetti.

Cereal chips and snacks that are opened go on this shelf. I tried to keep the opened with the unopened for awhile and I ended up with a lot of half eaten stale boxes of cereal. Now the kids know which ones to eat!

I love having a place to store this stuff!

Flour and sugar.

Extra supplies...

Baking! Yum!

My special white dishes for when I have lots of people over for dinner (along with paper plates which is what I use all summer!)

Cereal! Won't take us too long to go through all that

Rice (um, yeah...we bought the Costco bag...kind of a lot) and juice

Capri Suns. They are on the very top shelf. I can get them if I stand on my stool and jump.

Grocery bags. Lots of them. Let me know if you need them for anything.

So there you have it. My Friday Fun Night. Don't laugh. I spent Saturday evening just looking at it. (Just joking...I went to a wedding, but I could have!) When I finished I walked back out to the living room, thinking that I would restart "Jerseylicious" only to find that the DVR had switched the t.v. over to record another show (16 and Pregnant, if you must know) and the remainder of the show I had been watching was not longer available. I should have pushed record and not pause. Darn. Such a disappointing end to my lovely evening.

***WOW! I just reread that. It was really long. If you're still reading this you really are my friend! Or my mom. Or you have even less to do with your time than I do. Whatever the case, thanks for sticking with me!

My Mini Me

I LOVE Abby! She is such a tiny version of me and it cracks me up. She doesn't like chocolate or waking up early. She loves the sunshine and sweat pants. She likes to be in charge (gee, wonder where she gets that...). She puts her toys in the same tub every time she cleans her room and then makes sure that the tubs are always on the same shelf (I told you, I love this girl!) and yesterday she said, "I'll be there in just a second mom, I'm just organizing the bubbles." This is my girl!!! We were playing outside today and I couldn't help but smile when I looked at her and here's why...


My Flip Flops. She has been wearing them constantly. She asks me, on a daily basis, if I will save them for her when she's a mama. Of course I will, baby, because you never know when Old Navy will discontinue them.
Her Running Shirt. We have had this shirt since before she was born and it just now fits her. She calls it her running shirt and when she wears it she loves to demonstrate how fast she is. I couldn't be more proud!

Her Goofy Personality. She thinks she is hilarious! And if you laugh at something she says you can guarantee that she will say the same joke over and over and over and over and over and...

Her laugh is contagious she knows how to make people smile.

Her Sweet Smile. She is thoughtful and helpful and just about the sweetest girl you'll come across and there is nothing better than when she says "Mom?" "What Ab?" "I love you Mom." I love you too sweet girl.

Good News, Bad News

The good news is that it has been an awesome week! We started it off at the ocean with friends for the 4th of July and we haven't stopped. Until this week I had been cold since mid September and now that the sun is out we have been outside constantly. We have been swimming in the pool and taken the boat to American Lake twice. We have eaten all of our meals outside on paper plates (LOVE the easy clean up) and we have run ourselves so ragged that the kids are begging for bedtime. The bad news is that since we spent the week doing this...

this...

and this...

I have had no time to do this...

That's right folks. Do not readjust your monitor. It is what you think it is. An entire week's worth of laundry waiting to be folded and put away. My most dreaded chore. I have no trouble getting them washed or from the washer to the dryer. That's easy. And can be done with "help" from the kids. It's the folding and putting away that takes sooooooo long. Four people mean there are four different places that everything needs to go if and when it finally makes it off the laundry room counter. Add to that the four small hands who are unfolding things twice as fast as I can fold it and it takes the better part of a morning for me to get through my usual mountain of clothes. Now I know that if I were to fold them as they came out of the dryer it would probably be less time consuming and most certainly it would be less daunting. I assure you that tomorrow morning (as it is every morning after I have spent an entire 2 hour episode of The Bachelorette buried in bath towels and mismatched socks) my plan will be to take care of the clean clothes in a timely fashion. However I know that by the time the buzzer sounds on the first load I will be well into something much more fun and will save it until sometime later in July. But tonight there is no more putting it off. For one, there is no more room on the counter for the load that is waiting patiently in the dryer and for another Abby is sleeping in Ben's jammies and undies because her drawers are empty and attempting to find a tiny pair of panties in that heap is like trying to find a needle in a haystack...not happening. So if you call me tonight and I don't answer, it's not because I am screening my calls. It's just that I can't find the phone under all the clothes. Call back tomorrow.

Here I Go....

At dinner with friends the other night I mentioned that I get bored in the evenings and someone (Thanks Mel!) suggested that I start a blog. I thought about it for awhile and tonight (as I am sitting here by myself) I decided to go for it. So here is our day today. It was sunny, it was hot and it was AWESOME!

After swimming lessons, the first thing we did was eat Popsicles!



Then, we played in our newly furnished playhouse.

After that, we swam in our new pool!

We also played soccer,

and t-ball,

and rode motorcycles.

After nap we swam again...

ate some more Popsicles...

and swam some more!

We finished it all off with our first BBQ of the summer!

I can't say it enough, I LOVE summer!!