Happy Mother's Day!!

I hope you all had a wonderful day celebrating your Mother's or celebrating with your children and enjoying your own motherhood.

I got to spend the weekend away with my husband at Hershey Park, PA - lots of rides and lots of chocolate but no kids :) It was a nice break. I'd say that covers Mother's Day even though it was more for our 15th anniversary.

Now for Mother's Day I got a different sort of gift - my favorite kind:

Photos of my family!

My beautiful kiddos :)



The whole family - I think this is such a cool shot:



More of the family - seems like Rachel was not cooperating! Stinker...





My handsome boys...





And my beautiful girls...









I think these are my favorite - the individual shots of the kids - how cute are they?











And no photo shoot is complete without some good photos of me and my favorite guy!





A big thanks to Megan Keys from Keys Photography for the great shots! And of course, Happy Mother's Day to me :) I hope I can actually get some of these on my wall soon...

Menu Planning: New Month

Once again it's been a very busy week/weekend and another week has begun and I didn't get everything done I had hoped. Does this happen to everybody? To top it off Mother's Day is days away and my 15th anniversary is just days after that. Holidays and celebrations always mess up my menu plan as well as throw a curve in the list of things I need to get done on any given day.

Monday: Mac 'N Cheese Pie

Tuesday: Sassy Sloppy Joes

Wednesday: Chicken Broccoli Alfredo

Thursday: Moms of multiples meeting - I'm speaking on couponing so I have to be there but at least my meal will be covered :)

Friday: Mexican Shepherd's Pie

Saturday: Weeknight Lasagna Toss (or leftovers - I have a baby shower to go to so this one is up to Kirk!)

Sunday: Mother's Day - plans unknown!

Blogging for Books: When God Created My Toes Book Review

After a few fiction books I had the pleasure of reviewing a children's book or should I say my girls had the pleasure of reviewing it?

I thought the book was cute. It kept my 4-year-old triplets entertained and they very much enjoyed the graphics and the silliness of the girl in the story.

As for me I thought some of the rhymes were forced and a few didn't make sense. I don't know what ABC's have to do with knees other than that they rhyme. I also didn't like that the girl misbehaved - while it is natural it reminded me of the book "No David!" and while my girls do love that book I'm not a huge fan. In a Christian book I would rather see the misbehavior represented avoided or addressed as in forgiveness or discipline and since neither is the topic of the book avoidance would seem the better choice.

That being said we were able to focus on the fact that God created each part of our bodies and that He is the creator.

Bottom line: my 4-year-old girls enjoyed the book but I found it to just be okay and wouldn't highly recommend it to other moms.

To purchase the book head to Amazon

Disclaimer: I received this book as part of Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group's Blogging for Books program - the views are my own.

Menu Planning: End of the Month

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! We had a great time worshiping at church and then enjoying a HUGE dinner with our church family at our pastor's house. With lots of activities for the kids I actually had time to sit down and chat :)

I don't know about you but I have a LOT of ham now. Not a bad thing - I love ham and it makes a lot of different recipes that we don't get to eat very often - due to a very low grocery budget for the week most of the recipes will have to wait until May but I am planning to stick at least one in this week!

Monday: Ham and mashed potatoes leftovers (no this isn't the recipe but we have so much it affords me a night off from cooking)

Tuesday: Pronto Pasta & Sausage Skillet (a Pampered Chef recipe - no ham)

Wednesday: Sloppy Joe Biscuit Casserole (didn't have it last week)

Thursday: New-Look Scalloped Potatoes & Ham

Friday: Dinner on the go - we have a few different activities planned for Friday night so we'll have to fit dinner in somewhere

Saturday: Pizza Calzone Bake or some other sort of homemade pizza - I had a few different pizza ideas on my monthly menu plan this month but I didn't get to most of them

I have to say that when I budget I'm thrilled when the month is over :) It's a fresh start again soon! This is also my week of menu planning for next month. I already have a file going on my computer so my first stop is that file followed by my April folder to find any recipes that I didn't end up using. After that I look at our family favorites and if that doesn't fill up my calendar I check my favorite websites and cookbooks.

It's kind of like a treasure hunt to find the best tasting recipes for the month - my favorite is when I can find something new that we all love that becomes a family favorite for months to come - yum!!

Spring Break Organizing Day 4

This may looks like cheating but really it's not - really it's a visual of the end of a LOOOONG organizational project - my entire basement in fact. Before all the yard sales a few weeks ago I sorted bucket after bucket, toy after toy and this is what I had left:

This is the before though it's not like my family room normally looks like this (stop laughing...) - these are just the last of the buckets I had to sort and I've kept them in my family room to motivate myself to go through them.





Did it work?

Eventually...



But it's done. Save a few little follow-ups everything has been sorted and all small, annoying pieces have been thrown away!! I am praying that this means no more tedious toy sorting but I'm afraid as long as I have so many small children that just won't be the case.

I don't have plans to organize over Easter weekend as I will be spending lots of time with my family taking pictures and celebrating our risen Lord.

I hope you all have a very blessed holiday weekend.

Spring Break Organizing Day 3

So today wasn't exactly a closet but it was close :) I'm branching out! Today was Caleb's turn. I have to just say that he's a boy and having a neat and tidy room is VERY low on his priority list no matter how much I suggest that he pick things up - even if he just picks up enough so that firefighters would have a clear path to his bed in case of an emergency!

Boys...

Here's the before - this is more of a shelving unit then a dresser but it serves to hold Caleb's clothes for now. He always wants to rearrange his room and this is the current situation - at some point he probably needs a big boy dresser :)



And the after - notice the imperfections - I could only get so far! But at least all the clothes that are too small for him are removed and the mound of clothes is OFF the floor.



This is Caleb's closet - I have to say I hate the kids rooms in our house - for whatever reason we can't seem to arrange them well and the closets are all basically worthless - dressers don't fit well with their beds, the windows and the closets - hard to explain but all the closets have become either makeshift dressers (like the triplets) or almost unusable like Caleb's. But I did manage to get some things hung up in his closet and it's working for that :) The chair was his idea...



The after - just a bit more cleaned up.



Tomorrow will be a non-closet day...

Spring Break Organizing Day 2

I wasn't trying for the closet theme and I DO have PLENTY of other areas to organize but having clothes in order is such a stress relief for me. And nothing is more stressful than 3 little girls standing around me begging to tell them what to wear - which is kind of a joke because they NEVER want what I pick out anyway. So, in order to keep my sanity today I tacked the triplet's closet.

The dreaded before shot (I think it's worse than mine was!):



And after:



The girl's room doesn't have the space for a dresser and I am NOT the hanging-up type so instead we have buckets - each one with it's own theme: PJ's - one for winter, one for summer; winter clothes non-matching, winter clothes matching; summer clothes non-matching, summer clothes matching; dresses - you get the idea. By matching I mean triplet matching outfits - sometimes they dress alike, sometimes they don't. So, there's a bucket for that.

That's as organized as their clothes get :) Mine can be neatly folded but for them, that's a waste of my time - remember the outfit searching?

The other side of the closet is now empty and we'll use those shelves for all the girl's Pet Shops houses and a few other toys - should make the room cleaner in general and that's always a good thing!