Well, I got my butt kicked by Denise Austin this morning. I did the entire workout, except for the power abs section. My abs couldn't handle more. I haven't done an ab workout since before I got pregnant with Ainsley, so almost two years. I REALLY enjoyed the workout. It was my first time doing Pilates and I felt like it was totally doable and easy enough to follow. I really enjoy Denise Austin workouts. This is one I am going to have to invest in. I need to find out if she does a complimentary upper body workout. I'm sure there is something. I was trying to do the workout this morning. Hannah decided that she wanted to do Pilates, too. So she worked out next to me. And Ainsley didn't want to feel left out. So, she climbed all over me while I was doing the ab section. I had to take a break to put her to sleep, then start the program again. I am going to have to start doing my workouts at night after the girls go to sleep.
Ainsley is getting so big. She is 11 months old now and I am starting to plan her birthday party already! She can walk all the way across the family room now. She is getting pretty fast, too. She has seven teeth all the way in and I think she is getting several more. She is chewing on everything right now! She has a runny nose again, so between that and the teething, I think we are in for a pretty miserable couple of weeks. I finally have her drinking a formula bottle almost every day, right in time to break her from bottles! And she ate a sandwich today! I made her a little soy butter & strawberry jam sandwich today. She loved it! It's a great way to add protein to her diet since she can't really eat eggs or much meat yet. And since it's soynut butter, I don't have to worry about a peanut allergy.
Hannah is so smart! Today we had "school" time. She spelled her name all by herself today. We also spent some time writing her name. She is getting better at tracing her name. She can write a capital H and she just realized today that an "a" is a "circle with a line". So, hopefully she'll just catch on pretty soon. We have checked out several phonics DVDs from the library, but so far she doesn't show much interest. I really wish I still had the phonics book that I learned to read from. I can't remember what it was called, but it was really good. I turned out pretty smart. We are going to try to get her registered for preschool next year. I have to order her birth certificate first, though. She is such a funny little kid. She comes into the family room almost every night and BEGS to go to her ballet class because "all the kids are waiting for me." Yeah, she doesn't take dance classes. She cries and cries when we tell her that she can't go to dance class. So, we are thinking that we might need to find a community ballet class. If anyone knows of anything down here, let me know.
I have rediscovered organization in my life. Now that my house is finally put together (for the most part) it is so much easier to stay motivated and get every aspect of my life organized. I have gotten into a routine that works for us. Routine feels so nice! And I don't think I am going to have any problems falling asleep tonight. I am exhausted already. But since Hannah napped today we'll probably be up half the night. But part of being organized has forced me to plan meals ahead of time. Yesterday we had grilled Hillshire Farms sausage and fried potatoes, not healthy, but good Sunday comfort food. Then today for dinner we had grilled chicken breasts, salad & Rice-a-Roni for Thomas & sauteed zucchini for me. It was so good. And yes, THOMAS ATE A SALAD! He's still alive, so that's good, right? We are trying to use less salt in our cooking, so we switched from seasoning everything with seasoned salt to using a combination of Old Bay seasoning & Grill Time steak seasoning. Both have sodium in them, but much less than season salt per serving. And we use less seasoning overall. I highly recommend trying the Grill Time steak seasoning. We use it on our potatoes, chicken, steak, roast, and I even used it on my zucchini today! It's just a combination of salt, garlic and different peppers. It's only $1.97 at Wal-Mart for the brand name. The generic Kroger brand is pretty good, too.
Well, I am going to go clean up a bit and get some work done while Ainsley is napping. She just fell asleep on the family room floor while she was playing. She is so cute! She was reaching under the couch to get one of her balls that rolled under there, and she just gave up and fell asleep with one arm under the couch! :) I don't dare move her in case she wakes up!
Have a good day, all!
So, I was just at my friend Rachel's blog. She is a rep for Elisalou Designs. Rachel is advertising camera strap covers on her blog. She is putting in a party order in a couple of weeks, so if you want something, head over to her blog and let her know. These bags are GORGEOUS! They are currently out of my price range, but one of these days, I will get one! I love the bright colorful patterns. The messenger bag would make a gorgeous perfect size diaper bag for those of you in the market for one of those. She also has chenille baby blankets. I just want to snuggle up in one of those! Personally, I think I would request a messenger bag & baby blanket in the same fabric. Wouldn't that be cute? And one day when I am rich, that's what I will give as a baby shower gift! :) The market bag looks like fun, too! I love bags, can you tell?
First, Scrapbook-Elements is having their 4th Birthday! Most designers are having a sale. The THREE designers that I work with over there are all having sales!
Misty Cato - 25% off everything over $2
Tracey Monette - I believe hers is 25% off everything over $2 as well
Kiki Halbert - New products on sale
Second, Misty Cato has a free QuickPage on her blog today. It's one I made for her. If you like the QP (or even if you don't) check out the kit. It's gorgeous!
Third... Can I tell you that I JUST discovered the COOLEST digiscrap store! Thanks to my job at RAKScraps on the Sponsor Team, I just discovered Tangie Baxter's store. It's an amazing store with some GORGEOUS designs! Check these out! The images should be clickable. There is a also a code on the store blog for 30% off your purchase... I don't know how long the code is good for, so head over there and grab some beautiful stuff! There are GORGEOUS doodles, both in whimsical and primitive style. There are tons of designs for your altered art as well. This is a store that I will be following closely... and probably spend more money than I should there! :)
Fourth, another amazingly talented designer, Melissa Bennett, has 50% off her store until the end of March... better hurry and stock up over there!!! LOVE her new kit, Chickadee! She has some gorgeous pre-made bracket album pages that coordinate with the Basic Grey albums.
AND, speaking of bracket albums, and other shapes as well, SaraAmarie has a few new albums in her store! We have been working together to get these albums ready. It has been a delight and I have really enjoyed working with Sara. She is a complete sweetheart!
Well, I think that's enough from me for today... I am going to go do some scrapbooking instead of enabling all of you! :)
So, this was dinner tonight...
Sliced potatoes (I did about 9 small potatoes, sliced about 1/4" thick)
1 can cream of chicken soup (I use the 98% fat free)
1 can milk (the cream of chicken soup can filled with milk)
onion powder
garlic powder
ham cut into chunks
handful of cheddar cheese
I washed and sliced the potatoes. I leave the peel on. Then mix the soup & milk & spices together. Put all ingredients in a crockpot on low for 5 hours.
YUM! I made these last night for dinner and they turned out so much better than I hoped! By the way, our Costco has fresh ground turkey for $2.29/lb. Soooooo, we got a pack of that and some of their sandwich rolls and had a great dinner.
1 lb fresh ground turkey
1/4 cup oatmeal
1 egg
onion powder
garlic powder
Combine all ingredients very well, form into golfball-size balls. Brown meatballs in hot oil. Cook in crockpot for 3 hours, add BBQ sauce (KC Masterpiece original is AMAZING!) and heat for another 1/2 hour. This made about 16 meatballs. We served them on warm sandwich rolls. Thomas added fresh parmesan and I added romaine lettuce. Hannah even liked them. These would be REALLY good served over rice.
Okay, Mom & other family members who live to far to come visit me AND those slacker relatives who live close enough, but just haven't come over yet... HERE are the pictures of my house, finally put together. There is still a lot of work to be done, but it looks a TON better than it did a week ago.
This is my front door and the view into my house from the front door. I am very proud of my kitchen table! We didn't think we would have room for a kitchen table in this house!
As you come in the door and turn to the right, you are in the main living area. Please remember, these pictures were taken in the afternoon on Easter Sunday, after a long day of cooking, candy and kids!
Then, this is farther to the right. The doorway you can see between the couch and the chair is to our bedroom... not a hallway, directly into our bedroom. You'll get a better appreciation for our setup later into the tour.
This is the view from the door of the family room into the kitchen. Did I mention that it was late afternoon and the house is a mess?! If not, let me tell you that my kitchen doesn't usually look that bad. Sorry, Dad, my cupboard doors don't stay closed. The cupboards are too narrow for a box of cereal up top. And the bottom cupboards just don't stay closed. It makes me CRAZY!!! And that door next to the highchair DOES go into the bathroom. The far door is Hannah's room.
This is our bathroom. As you may have noticed, we don't have a ton of storage in this house. So, we put a dresser in the bathroom for bathroom stuff. It is going to be painted nutmeg once the weather gets a little warmer and spraypaint sticks. And the walls don't look that bad in person. I mopped them when we moved in, but I think I made them worse. I need to just stock up on Magic Erasers and scrub them. 
When you go into Hannah's room, you see the window with her adorable new curtains! I pinned the flowers on the curtains all by myself. I know, I know, I'm talented! To the left of the door is the kids' closet. Yes, there is a dresser in the closet. No, there are no doors on the closet. The doors take up too much room, so we took them off. No one ever comes to our house, so functionality is more important than appearance for us in this little space. The door that you can see on the right side of the picture of the dressers is the door that goes down to the basement and out to the backyard. So, we can't block that door if we want to be able to do laundry or use our backdoor. It has a childproof handle on it so that Hannah can't escape. I am betting that we are going to have to add a high deadbolt before our lease is up!
To get a feel for the real size of this house, yes, that is a regular size twin bed. It goes from wall to wall. 
Then, this is the view from Hannah's bedroom door back through the house. And the view from the kitchen door into the family room & our room. Our room isn't ready to be photographed at this point. We still don't have dressers for our clothes, so we have piles and baskets of laundry all over the place. But at least it's clean laundry.
A week ago, there were still a lot of boxes all over the house. Thomas and I were up until about 4am Sunday morning trying to get everything ready for Dylan & Ashley to come over for Easter dinner. We got a lot done, but we know that there is still a lot more to do. Our favorite part is that we have our table set up and we can eat dinner together as a family, and all have a chair! :) We only have two barstools, so someone always had to stand during dinner if we wanted to eat together. We love our little home and it finally feels like a home! Thomas picked out the family room curtains. I think he did a pretty good job! We found them at IKEA, along with the curtain rod. AND he hung up all the pictures and shelves, except for the crooked ones... I'll take responsibility for those. :)
A Walk in the Forest Banner AlbumRachel tagged me, so here we go...
1. I HATE things being misspelled. But when I type, my left hand types faster than my right, so I always end up misspelling things. And I think I might be a bit dyslexic, too.
2. I miss good food. I hate having food allergies. Okay, I know I complain about this all the time, but it's so true! I read a restaurant review on my friend, Jenna's, blog earlier and I am so sad that I can't eat a single thing at that restaurant!
3. I am a packrat AND a clean freak. The two don't mix well. I have stacks and stacks of clean clutter all over the place. The good thing is that I have a lot less clutter today than I did a week ago! My house will get finished soon!
4. I hate wearing socks and closed-in shoes. But I LOVE flipflops and HIGH HEELS, even close-toed ones.
5. I have no desire to ever go to someplace like Hawaii... I'd rather go somewhere I have family.
6. I love to shop, but hate to spend money.
7. Bleach is one of my absolute favorite scents.
Feel free to be tagged and participate!
Thanks, Aleisha!!!!
3 things that....
Fascinate me:
How things work... like cars.
How things are made... I LOVE that show on the Discovery Channel
Am I really so dull that I can only think of two???
Inspire me:
Beauty. Beautiful things like flowers, mountains, trees, clouds.
My kids. They inspire me to be a better person.
The gospel. I can do it. And what I can't do on my own, the Savior will help me.
Anger me:
Dumb people. Especially dumb people driving.
Bigotry.
Liars.
Delight Me:
My kids! They make me laugh!
Vanilla soy ice cream with Hershey's syrup and soy nut butter. I REALLY wish I had some right now!
Hannah telling me that she loves me & seeing Ainsley smile when I get her out of her crib!
Frighten me:
That my husband or kids won't live as long as me.
Not having health insurance
SPIDERS! I hate them!
Relax me:
A HOT bath with a book and a scented candle... hmmm, the kids ARE asleep! :)
A hug from my amazing husband
A clean house, hence the reason I am ALWAYS stressed out these days!
Here is another fun *free* QuickPage that I created for Misty Cato with her Fields of Fun kit. I love that kit. It really is a sweet kit! You can find the link to the QuickPage on her blog.
On Saturday, we went to Grandpa & Grandma Cardall's house for a family Easter party. Nothing like getting the kids all hopped up on sugar a week early! Hannah thinks it's Easter all week. But she had a really good time playing with her cousins and doing an Easter egg hunt. Ainsley liked the shiny pink eggs. Hannah loved all the candy inside the eggs, Mommy DID NOT! There were oval-shaped candies that looked like chocolate. I made Thomas bite into one to see if there was anything inside. Nothing but Hershey's chocolate! SCORE! So, I started eating them out of Ainsley's basket. Delicious! Until I bit into a peanut butter filled one! NOT GOOD! I immediately spit it out, brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth and took allergy medicine, but my mouth and throat itched for over four hours anyway. I'm really lucky it wasn't worse. I have officially decided that I am no longer eating anything from anyone or anywhere unless I can read the packaging! It really scared me. We don't let our kids even eat peanut butter, so I forget that other people allow their kids to eat it. No more unpackaged candy for us! But, the good news is that I didn't die or have to go to the emergency room. AND we had a good time visiting with friends and family at Grandma & Grandpa's house.
Creating Keepsakes Ali Edwards handwriting font is available for free on their website. This is one of those highly coveted fonts! If you like handwriting fonts, be sure to get this one!
I am working on a couple of big scrapbooking projects and will be pretty busy for the next couple of weeks. So, if you don't see me posting here much over the next week or so, don't worry too much! :)
We have been having great weather here. We've been trying to take full advantage of the sunshine! :) 
This layout is from when we went to the park the other day. I love this new kit! It will be in the store at Scrapbook Elements on Sunday (I think!). This layout is for a scrapbooking contest that I am in right now.
Here are few fun pictures from the last week or so...
This is Ainsley & I relaxing together before the Red Vine. She has the stinkiest baby feet in the entire world! Not kidding. You could smell those little feet across the room. She wasn't wearing sock or anything. I scrubbed her feet at least three times that day. She just had a stinky feet couple of days. Thank goodness it has gone away. 
Hannah learned how to pump her legs while swinging today. Mommy even tried to do it a little bit. Mommy was pretty nauseas for a while.
This is Hannah when she got to the bottom of the HUGE twisty slide.
This is Hannah and Daddy playing soccer this afternoon. Hannah is so TALL and is so grown up these days. Love that little kiddo!
This is Ainsley's first time in a swing. She didn't seem to have much of an opinion on it. Hannah used to love to swing at this age, but Ainsley just sat there. She didn't seem scared at least. This is the most of a smile I was able to get out of her.
This is Ainsley standing up on her own at the park. She's wearing REAL shoes! Before, her shoes were always too big and the only ones that fit her were her boot slippers. So, I was trying to find her some shoes to wear today and I found these adorable little tennis shoes. They are a size 3! She never even wore her size 1 & size 2 shoes. They were too wide for her.
Daddy, Ainsley & Hannah walking through the grass together.
