Springing up New Ideas!

It’s Earth Month!  On April 22, 2008, we will all experience the joyous occasion of Earth Day.  One of my favorite days!  I love to see people getting excited and becoming more aware of exactly how wonderful nature is. 

So where have I been this past week??  No blogging?  I was on a roll with posting everyday and then spring hit.  Well, just for a few days over here in Michigan.  Now it’s once again cold and gray.  But for a few days it was beautiful.  We were outside ALL day long for 2-3 days straight.  Which was great for airing out the house after an intestinal bug had it’s way with us for a couple days as well.  Yucko! 

Spring always inspires big plans for expanding my garden and showing my kids how nature is amazing in it’s wild, beautiful ways.  Here are my latest plans for this summer…start a state of the art composting area.  Okay, “state of the art” is just my interpretation of what it will be.  I live on a city lot, so I don’t have a ton of space and I have never done this before besides letting some grass clippings rot on the side of the yard because I didn’t want to keep paying for yard waste bags.  This will be my way to green my life even more.  Hopefully with minimal investment and maximum outcome.  I can’t wait to see how this composting bit can support my love of gardening.

My other project is going to be a butterfly garden for the kids.  Zack has already been asking to go to the flower store and pick out some annuals.  Not bad for a 4 1/2 yr old, huh??  I love it!  So, he will definitely be involved in all areas of planning our butterfly garden.  We have gone twice to Meijer Gardens here in town to look at all the beautiful butterflys.  The kids love it and it gives us a chance to talk about what butterflies need to survive, how they grow, and also what they like in their surroundings.  Already a great start for this little project.

My third project that I am slowly but surely working on is a big old garage sale that I will be having in a month.  This is an opportunity to get rid of some items that are useless to me and the fam.  We have so much crap in our house and I am sure that someone else needs it in theirs :)  It’s also a good way to celebrate earth month because it totally supports reducing, reusing, and recycling.  Plus, it will support the other green movement at our house…our new budget (thanks to Dave Ramsey).

Keep springing up those new ideas!

 

Wordy Wednesday

Normally, I would have a “Wordless Wednesday” post. Today, I obviously did not. “Why?”, you say. I will tell you why. My Wednesday has been anything but wordless. It has been filled with talking and whining and crying and temper tantrums. Well, enough about me…let’s talk about the kids.
They were in rare form today. I had a game board thrown at me and was told that by Zack that I had ruined his whole day just because I wouldn’t let him cheat while playing CandyLand (note: this action sent him to the naughty spot for a very, very long time). The nerve!! I hate that game anyway. I never win. Stupid Licorice guy gets me everytime. And let’s not even talk about my never ending quest to win just one game of Chutes and Ladders. I swear to you that I have never won that game since we have gotten it this past Christmas. Even though I am playing against a 4.5 year old and a 2.5 year old, I can never win! Those blasted slides send me right down to the bottom every time. Zack thinks it’s the funniest thing ever. Me, not so much. You might say he gets his competitive streak from me.
Then, there’s little Gret. Sweet little Gret with her tiger teeth. No nap today. Just a quick little bit of shut-eye on the way home from the Good Idea Momma house after a playdate (seeing as how that drive took 5 minutes, it wasn’t much of a nap).  One would think that a 1 year old vampire (due to her teeth) would want a little sleep during the day.  Not this one.  She wanted to run and whine and then eat cheesecake all day.  Yes, again, she’s just like her mommy and loves the cheesecake.  Thanks Oma for making it at Easter!  It’s my favorite and I realized it’s Gret’s new fav as well since she followed me around growling for more after her first taste.  The sugar did wonders in improving her mood.                     

At this moment you may be wondering what the point of this long winded post may be.  Here it is:  I have declared today “Wordy Wednesday”.  Therefore, I just typed whatever came into my brain because it really doesn’t matter if it makes sense, it just needed to be wordy.  Plus, the large Mocha that I picked up on the way home from grocery shopping at 10pm tonight really has me wired.  If there was anyone awake at my house right now, I would talk to them instead.  But their not and you’re here still reading this longwinded pointless post.  So I will keep typing….see my next post about my grocery hoarding for more words.  Word…to your mutha! (and I mean that in the nicest, best way possible.)

 

We Have too Many Chips and Not Enough Dales

There are some very strange and disturbing phenomena occurring over here at our house.  The clumsy curse continues.  For those of you who don’t know me in real life, you may not be aware that my family has a little bit of clumsy built into our genetic code.  I am not sure what gene it’s on, but I have found it to be a dominant trait.

This crazy clumsy gene has now appeared in our little Gret.  Somehow, somewhere she has managed to chip BOTH of her top front teeth!!!  I am so angry!  She just got those teeth and they are already chipped.  You can imagine how extremely gapped tooth she looks now since that’s another family trait from mama.  I guess it was her turn seeing as how both of the boys have had chipped teeth for a couple years now.  But man, we didn’t even get a 1 year old picture with her new pearly whites and to top it off, we don’t even know when this occurred!  There has been no blood shed or crying.  She’s obviously a tough little cookie.

So as of today, all 3 of my children have fallen (thank goodness, they all got up) on their faces and have broken teeth.  At least you can see the resemblance between the 3 of them.  All three have smiles that resemble a boxer.  Gret’s smile is the best…2 little nubbins of teeth that are now little sharp triangular daggers.  We’ll have to look at those for the next 6 years, but you can bet that her breast feeding days are seriously numbered right now.  Imagine getting bitten by those pointy things.

 

The Cheapest Aromatherapy EVER!

Well, I have been working on collecting some information on essential oils and aromatherapy uses.  I get a little bored with the same scents and I really don’t know much about how to mix the different oils together for different uses for baths or cleaning beyond lavendar and tea tree oil.

Anyway, as I was trying to find a good reliable website to reference, my children were playing in the same room.  They were jumping around and acting silly.  When suddenly, Zack “tooted” (a.k.a. farted).  “Uh Oh, Excuse me!” he shouts.  Anson falls on the floor in belly laughs.  Zack continues to jump around laughing as well.  I hear another little stinker slip out.  They both die laughing again.  Meanwhile, I am dying from the aromas.  The pattern continues, Zack expells loud odiferous tooters and they both squeal with laughter.

I decided this is some kind of aromatherapy in itself.  It definitely was a natural scent and it had an emotional response.  I think it’s the cheapest aromatherapy you could ever find for your 4 and 2 yr old boys.  It was really effective in cheering them up and making them feel happy.  However, I caution the user of this method: aromatherapy through tooters does have mixed results.  While the children were rolling on the floor laughing, I was disgusted and passed out from asphyxiation by my computer.  I don’t think that the mixed response was due to age differences because my husband has the same response to tooters as the kids.

Meanwhile, I am still trying to find some recipes for aromatherapy.  I will let you know what I come up with once my mind clears from this methane hangover I am suffering from.  Feel free to try the above method, that is, if you are man enough.