This and That

It’s rare for me to capture a sleeping Joanna.  She usually sleeps in her bed at regular sleeping times.  :)  But one morning she’d gotten up early and then crashed on the couch.  She stayed asleep through all of our morning noise as well.  I do really love that that child can often sleep through some crazyness.

I was making myself some scrambled eggs one day, and this is how they cracked in the bowl.  It made me smile.  :)

This is one of Joanna’s faces that I think I could look at forever and ever.

It was last Thursday morning (I know because that was water day at school.)  She is always carrying that boy around on her back.  I really hope she doesn’t hurt herself!

This boy has gooooood outfits.  He didn’t break his neck just prior to this picture, he was looking at someone else and doing his cocked head smile.

From Sunday.  Matt was taking my 25 week “preggo pose” and kept shooting  as I was turning.  I like how it turned out though – I look kind of contemplative.

Sunday afternoon we went over to Mamma and Pop’s house since a couple of cousins were in town!  Jenny and Heather took Joanna and Natalie to the frozen yogurt place for a little cousin date and then we were all back at the house being silly and playing.

Natalie loves Jenny’s dog.

Piggy back rides!

Jail!

This boy must have held a grape in each cheek for at least 30 minutes.  He only finally ate them because Mamma had some olives.  :)

Poor life size Barbie James.  The girls brought him out to the living room the other morning having dressed him up as Sleeping Beauty.

He had to lift it up to walk.  Good sport, that one.  :)

Sunday our Vandengirls got back into town, and we got to go over for lunch and some playing on Monday!!!!

They sure missed each other!!!!!!!

This is kind of a cheater post where I shove all the recent need-to-blog pictures in, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do!

Old Uniforms? Dress Up!

Since the United/Continental merger, the companies have each continued to wear their respective uniforms… until last week.  Then it was time for a new look for them.  So my mom asked around to see if anyone had any old size 0 pieces for her grandchildren to use for dress up!  A United lady gave these two dresses that the girls have been enjoying wearing.  Mom also passed along a shirt that James has spent most of the last two days in.  :)

Joanna and James have mostly pretended to be Darth Vader.  The new costumes coincided with us finishing the original trilogy a couple of days ago.  :)

Here Darth Vader has Princess Leia in custody.

Joanna is doing her Darth Vader breathing face (Natalie too!)

Such fun with old things!

Earlier in the week

I was sooooooo tired early in the week.  {In fact, I’m only now feeling mostly back to my usual self.}  But apparently that can’t stop me from catching some cute pictures!

Natalie put the skirts from her Groovy Girls on her wrists – voila!  Instant super hero bands.

I wouldn’t have guessed she even had a concept for that. 

She likes to dress herself, but not all of it quite coordinates.

Speaking of coordinating, check out Rambo here, with is pink headband and blue beads.  That boy is stylin!

I love it when I can catch a shot of Natalie reading a book.

I was in the girls room (on Wednesday, I think?) cleaning up, and I brought Laura and her bucket of toys with me.

I like all the colors in this one…

but I also like how the black and white makes it easier to focus on the cute baby.

Taking pictures and editing them is fun!!

And so is feeling halfway normal enough to blog!

TGIF!!

Miscellaneous Things Including Shoes

I was cleaning up in the girls room the other day and came upon this cache of acorns.  So I don’t know whether I have squirrels living in the house or maybe my children are squirrels or maybe there’s an oak tree in the walls.  I’m stumped.  :)

I love these pink sandals of Natalie’s.  I will be sad when they don’t fit her anymore.

James got a box of hand-me-downs the other day – yay!!  In the box were these awesome cowboy boots which Natalie promptly claimed for herself.  :)  I love her style.

They actually do fit, so they may get passed through one more kiddo before James gets to wear them.  :)

Baby Laura started coming over this week, and James is OBSESSED.  He loves her so so so so much.  Here he’s cleaning up her mouth a little bit.  Sooooo cute!

He’s such a good “big brother!”

Hanging around

The children love Backyardigans, and they like to dress up and pretend to be the characters after they watch an episode.

Joanna and Natalie are Uniqua and Tasha.

Someday Natalie will be able to give me a real smile on command.  :)

James loves his big sisters – snuggles!

This week Natalie got into a bad pattern of waking up in the 6:00 hour. {I am NOT a fan!}  One day she went to her room a little afternoon and tried to take a nap.  I took the picture, but then woke her up right away.  She does not get to wake up early and then take a nap to make up for it!  She needs to sleep in!

The Vandengirls came over on Wednesday, and at some point everyone was dressed as a super hero.  Love ‘em!

I don’t remember now exactly what happened, but James got hurt in some little way, and Joanna ran to grab her doctor kit. 

He let her work on him for a while before he’d had enough.

Siblings are THE BEST!

James is Cute and Laundry Soap

Then end of our vacation has been rather anticlimactic, but still very nice.

This was from last night.  The girls are always dressing up that boy.

Though sometimes he does it to himself.

He pulled Natalie’s swim shorts off the drying rack today and wore them as a hat.

I’ve been pretty domestic today, thank goodness!  I have just not felt like baking or really doing anything more than the basics in the kitchen lately.  I’m sure the lack of desire to bake has something to do with it being August in Houston.  :)  But I had such an itch I had to bake a few things today, regardless of the heat.

Sadly, I have no pictures to prove it.  :)  I simply hate the light in my kitchen, and it’s too much work to haul stuff to a whole other room while I’m trying to wrangle kids and multitask in the the kitchen.  SO, that’s why no pictures.  :)

I made two loaves of banana bread, a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, and a double batch of pancakes (then we ate some for dinner).  Everything is bagged and in the freezer for quick breakfasts and snacks.  Yay!!!

I also mixed up a batch of laundry soap.  I’m going to post my current “recipe” here since I keep looking it up every time I make a batch.

I yanked this picture off my blog from a couple of years ago because I’m just too tired from all this domesticity to go into the pantry and take another one.

Wow my DSLR takes such better pictures.  :)

Anyway – the ingredients:

• 1 bar of Fels Naptha soap
• 1 cup of Super Washing Soda
• 1 cup of Borax

The various recipes out there in cyberspace call for different ratios, but I’m pretty sure this is what I did last time.  Checking the blog though, I don’t think it’s what I did the time or two before.  I think the amounts of soda and borax were double what I used this time.  I think I’ll just see how I like my laundry and adjust if needed.  :)

Step 1 – Buy extra Fels Naptha and let it sit {wherever you keep cleaning products and such} until the next time to need it.  I have found it grates sooooo much easier and you can really get a powder from it if it isn’t fresh from the store.

Step 2 – Have your husband or some other willing strong person (it could even be you) grate the Fels Naptha on the fine side of the grater.

That is sadly the last picture due to all the multitasking and not wanting to leave the kitchen to take a decent picture and not wanting to settle for less than decent.  So the rest will just be words.

Step 3 – Pulse the grated soap in the food processor until it’s a powder.  {Probably the whole thing could be done in the food processor, but this seems to work the best for us; you could also skip the processing if you don’t have one.}

Step 4 – Mix the soap powder with the borax and washing soda in the container of your choice.

Step 5 – Do laundry!  Add 1T to regular, even full loads.  You can add a little more to very soiled loads or a little less to small loads.  I put the detergent in when I’m filling the washer so it has a chance to dissolve a bit before I add the clothes.  If I’m washing in cold water, I will sometimes close the lid and let the water agitate for a minute to help that process along.

Notes:

• I don’t use this detergent on kitchen towels, unless I’m out of anything else, simply because it will build up over time, and I wash those a lot.  I also don’t use this on diapers for the same reason. But it’s fabulous on regular clothes. 
• I wash the food processor parts and the cheese grater very very very well after I use them to make detergent.  Someday I will have dedicated laundry tools, but for now this makes me feel okay.

And now I’m off to eat cookies and lay on the couch.  I’m so thankful I have one more weekend before we get back to reality!

James and Fashion

It is so good to have a baby brother around to dress up.  :)

James was given this super-cute tiger costume, and because of the hood, it’s very easy for the girls to put it on him.  It’s good he’s pretty easy going about these kinds of things.

Just FYI, he can get himself out of the side-table-jail, but I think sometimes he forgets.

It’s not considered child abuse when you take a picture of your child in slight distress before helping them, is it?

An aside: The shirt that James is wearing above may be my favorite of his right now.  I’m not even exactly sure what it says, but I just love the way it looks on him!  I think it’s partly the color (it’s a color I look good in, so my mini-me must also!) and partly the neck-line.  LOVE IT!

Two Cute Girls

This was last Sunday (when it was actually cold enough – just barely! – to wear warmish clothes).  The girls looked so pretty I had to take them outside for a photo shoot.

When I kneel down to take their picture, they kneel down too.  :)

Natalie’s dress is a Vandengirl hand-me-down, and Joanna’s outfit is from her Gran.

Oh that face!!

This was Monday.  Joanna had a follow-up visit with the ENT.  We were waiting for a room to open up and I thought I would entertain myself by taking pictures of Joanna.

This skirt I think came from Joanna’s friend Riley last year; I’m pretty sure the boots did too.  I dug out a pair of tights that really are too small, but in the name of fashion she squeezed into them.  :)

If you didn’t know better, couldn’t she be like 17?!!

(Oh, and FYI Joanna still (or again) has some kind of pressure problem with her ears that is affecting her hearing.)

When we go to enchilada night, Joanna and Natalie always end up watching a movie on Christiana’s iPhone.  :)

They’re just so stinkin’ cute!

I finally got the girls in for haircuts; they’ve been so scraggly! 

After she gave them a trim, Stacey gave the girls pig-tail French braids!

I can do this to my own hair, and theoretically to the girls’, I just don’t think they’d sit so still for me!

I was so amazed at how she could braid Natalie’s hair and make it stay.  Natalie’s hair is so soft and fine.

Love it!

And they woke up the next day with waves!