A match made in heaven

Tristan and chocolate truly are a match made in heaven. There is nothing she loves more... well, maybe Hannah Montana's "Hoedown Throwdown" song! She even has these cute polka dot pajamas that she calls her "pop it, lock it jammies", totally cute!


She's such a cutie. She reminds me SO much of Madison when she was a little girl. And then I can't believe where all the time has gone? Madison is getting so grown up.

If they could just be this cute and nice ALL the time... is that too much to ask? ;)

Is it time for dinner?

I'm so Thrilled about this new little "group" we started down here... a reciep group. I mean, what could be better than good friends and good food... seriously. Anyway, I hosted lunch at my house today, and we had quite the turn out, I didn't count, there were too many, but I think there were something like 12+ moms and over 30 kids/babies... and my house ain't that big! So, there were lots of yummy things to eat, check out all those dishes I was able to snag a picture of! So, over time our recipe collection will grow, but if you see anything that looks good, you can try the recipe out here.

One "To-Do" too many....

So apparently two tasks in a day is a little TOO much. It's a good thing that I'm cutting out doing one thing a day because if I can't do 2, getting a third thing is totally out of the question! And I can't have the one thing I cut out everday be a shower, or I might get to be one stinky person!

I managed to get the sewing items done yesterday and subsequently mailed out today. The bread however never happened. As for today, the bathroom got 3/4 of the way done, atleast most of the things I have to see all day are cleaner. The catching up on laundry, only got touched when the extra towels from the bathroom got washed.

I think I'm over-estimating what I can do in a day by under-budgetting my time. I waste my fair share of time (farmville, blogging, recipe browsing) but really, if I can't do some things I like, then where is the joy? TJ suggested that I track what I do during my day so I have a better idea of how much I can actually do in a day. And as tedious as that seems, it did help me calm down a little bit to run back through my day.... I was going to list it, but that seems excessive. point is that it is fool-proof, there was hardly too much time wasting going on!

So, we are down to the ONE item a day, just do ONE, get it DONE, is that so hard?

Thinking about "goals"

So, my friend Melissa J. spoke in church today, I didn't hear much of what she had to say, I was a little busy trying to stop Tristan from screaming, or too busy fuming at why I would be there, sitting on the bench alone, with 4 kids, while TJ passed the sacrament, feeding a bottle to one, and trying to give the other ANYTHING she wants to prevent her from making a scene... oh yeah, did I mention we were in the FIRST row, and heck, we were even early to church today, but we have to sit in the big bench now, with our big family.

Anyway, back to what I was saying... I DID hear a few things that she had to say. I think she was talking about goals, and how we can improve ourselves with and by setting goals. I basically only heard 3 things, and I made sure to type them into my phone and email them to myself while I sat there. This is what I heard:

1. Start everyday by deciding to NOT do something. (Like stopping a poor habit.)

2. Start everday by DOING something. (Like starting a good habit, or doing something you have been "meaning" to do, but haven't gotten around to it yet.)

3. Write it down. (If you don't write it down, it doesn't count, because you aren't held accountable the same way, and you can't look back at what you wrote to see if you really accomplished the task.)

So, I think I'd like to implement a few of those into my life. I mean, I have given up on drinking soda, I'm now 10% done with that, hey that sounds kinda cool! But there's a whole other HUGE list of things that I would love to get to, and I guess I don't ever scrape up enough "do" to jsut get up and get it all done, and I make a lot of excuses on the way. And maybe I'd be happier if I was doing all those things that I would love to get to. Oh yeah, we also watched "Julie & Julia" last nite (great movie if you were wondering.) I'm now considering buying Julia Childs' cookbook... but then decided I should lose weight before consuming all that butter. However, the girl in the movie makes a plan to get her through, so I think that's what I'll do, I want to be doing one thing everyday that gets me caught up on my list.

Along side this, I recently heard in a conference talk or something (I don't remember who said it...) But He was saying that we should beautify our homes one room at a time. Now that is something I think I can handle. I don't EVER get a chance to spend much time cleaning anything. the windows of time I have are small, and far between. But I think if I jsut made a list of different things, then I would actually have a plan to get them done. So, maybe my list will go something like this:

Sunday~ Finishing sewing baby items, make bread
Monday~Deep clean master bath, catch up on laundry folding (my nemesis in life)
Tuesday~Remove all toys from my office, remove all trash from my office
Wednesday~ Minimize toys in girls' bedroom, remove clothing that is too small
Thursday~ Declutter pantry
Friday~ Clear all dresser surfaces in Master bedroom, deep clean hall & downstairs bathroom
Saturday~ find home for new saws in garage and NOT in living room

Okay, so that's a decent list. I think I should be able to work on those... I mean, it's gotta be easier to just wake up, do what's on the list, then take a nap on the couch; instead of wake up, take a nap, then rush to figure out something to do, so it LOOKS like I did something today, although that has usually worked until now;)

There are a few other things, like going to the gym and stuff, I think I'll hold off on adding them to my daily list, since I'll only be able to go once or twice this week. And hopefully after seeing the doc this wednesday we'll have a better idea of what needs to happen with them!

Ballerina Girls

Brooklyne has her gymnastics recital tomorrow, so we HAD to try on the leotards tonite.... where do they come up with this stuff?!

These awesome moves are compliments of kindergarten... ah, she has learned SO much there....;)

By the way, they totally think they are twins! Ha! Cute.



And this is some sort of synchronized fruit ballet.... !

And of course Tristan is in love with doing what her sisters are doing, so we had to dig out a leotard to fit her too. What a cutie!

Grandpa makes a visit

So my dad stopped in a few days before Christmas and made a quick surprise visit, it was really nice and ended up being a lot of fun too. He flew in to town to have lunch with me and the girls. We went to The Alamo House, I was less than impressed with the food, it wasn't anything to write home about. I think my dad and I are giving up on good Mexican food around here, we'll just stick to what Texans know how to do ~BBQ brisket~!!

We did a little bit of christmas shopping together, with all 4 kids in tow. My Dad kindly suggested that I probably don't do that often. When I asked why he would think that, he told me because it was a LOT of work! He's totally right. I will avoid doing/getting LOTS of things if I have to take kids in/out, it gets pretty tough.

Before his few hour trip was up we went to the Japanese sunken gardens. I was very amused by that place. It was quite pretty and very quite. I'm amused at the history of it all, if you haven't gone, or if you haven't read about it, you should do so while in S.A., it's quite the piece!