Happy July ~ Day 1

Happy July everyone! July is my favorite month. It's SUN, parties, SUN, birthdays, SUN, lounging, SUN, fresh fruit, more SUN, and just all around SUN... I mean fun! I just love July! Here is a great picture of our house. (I changed my color to red in honor of July. I think I'll go back to pink soon.)

Oops... not the picture I was talking about when I wanted you to see the view... (just kidding... story below.) Here's the house:

I want to start flying an American flag on the holidays. It is something that we did as a kid, and I want to do it for our family as well. I asked Doug if we could mount one of those (he thinks they are cheezy... as you can tell by the picture) brackets on the house that you slide the flag pole into. (I don't think he means to offend any of you that have them...I think for us, he thinks it would be cheezy. It would get lost on our hosue...) He looked at me, and asked where would we mount one of "those things"? I said I don't know, and I don't care, I just want to fly a flag. He said "OK". This is what I got! Isn't he awesome! We'll fly it for about a week, but as you can tell by the next picture, technically, we could fly it all the time. (See the next picture.) We won't though, because it blocks the view from the top window. Isn't he awesome?

This is our night shot.

So the story about Chase. Our kids LOVE to slip-and-slide. They go all the way down the hill, it is great! Chase was really tired on this day (a few days ago) and I took him in the house and put him down for a nap. He thinks he can decide when his naps are done and he gets himself up without sleeping. He did so on this day. Came outside (Doug claims he had underwear on, the proof is in the picture...) and well, there you have it. He was doing the slip-and-slide, "butt naked!" I had to take a picture, and then he got in trouble.

So today is my first official post for posting everyday for a month. We'll see how it goes. I was laying in bed thinking today about what I'd post (it's going to be a long day, I needed to do it early, we're picking blue3berries today) and I thought if this goes well, maybe I'd do a month where I post entirely about the kids ~ what they say and do. Tt would be fun, but I guess I'll just have to wait-and-see how this month goes.

Ambri and Oakli's Bedroom

I finished painting Ambri and Oakli's bedroom today. It took me a week to do, and I'm beat! I've wanted to paint it like this for a long time. I saw the idea and thought that if I waited long enough the idea would wear off, but it never did. The painting bug hit me a few weeks ago, and this is my 3rd room. The other 2 rooms I painted "normal" though. Bryce is lining up for his room next. The problem is, I'm worn out!

I like the walls so much, I don't know where to put the girls beds. Up until right be3fore I painted their room, we had them bunked. Mainly to keep Oakli up on her bed during naps (she was on the top bunk and she couldn't get off) now they are both on the floor. I really just want to put both beds outside with the "shracoons" (that's what my younger kids affectionately call raccoons) and have all the walls showing. Does anyone object?

Did I mention how much I now dislike pink? Let me start by saying, I've always liked pink and brown together, I think they look really classy together (don't knock the blog background). Sure pink is a great color for clothes, jewelry, flowers, cotton candy, subtle nail polish, shoes, hair ribbons, stickers, bathing suits, toothbrushes, stuff like that. But paint in large coverages... I think I'm going to have to re-evaluate my thinking on this one. I knew there was a reason that I never wanted to paint their room pink. The other two walls are plain pink, 2 different shades. One wall has the closet on it, the other wall has the window. Their room glows pink. It's like... radiation pink. Pepto pink. The brown wall and flower wall is awesome. It's just too bad that you don't see those walls first thing when you walk in. You have to turn around after you go in. You have to get radiation poisoning first, then feel like you are going to choke, then turn around and try to realize that there are two really cool walls in the room. The cool-ness factor has worn off, and by now the flower walls are only semi-cool, because you are suffocating in the radiation poisoning you have just committed yourself to. I wonder what would have happened if I would have painted the closet doors pink as well? (I did leave those white.)

It's all good, because I'm still super, euber proud of the (awful) (awsome) pink, and slightly brown room that I slaved over for over a week on. I am awesome!

~Kari

Food Storage Wrap-Up

I've had lots of sticks in the fire these last few weeks, so I'll wrap up the food storage issue and then hopefully in the next day or so get a few pictures posted of the project that I've been working on (It's still a secret - okay, I'm painting the girls bedroom. It's taking so long because I'm doing each wall different, and two of the walls have designs on them. Some secret, eh?).

Food Storage, focus.

I think I have devised a pretty good system that is working for us. It looks like this:


So after I got everything inventoried and figured out what I needed more of, I made this little chart and hung it on a clip board. Now only send out people for stuff that can write and each time they take something out of the storage room, they have to write it on the list. It is actually working really good. Now when I go shopping, I know exactly what to buy! I have a master list on the computer that I can compare it to if I need to, but this is working so well! We have actually gone through 3 of these already. They don't have to writ3e (note the previous post on my "3" relationship) down things that are canned b3ecause that will just get replaced in the summer - oh I can't wait for summer - when I do canning but anything that is purchased goes on the list. It was just nice to get everything inventoried, organized, and things purchased that I was running short on. Here are some other pictures of how it looks now...

That 90's Dress

I though more about last night's post and also because I talked to a friend on the phone today about my whole weight loss thing. Well, I guess I'll use "friend" loosely, because she had no idea that I had lost weight, even though I talk to her pretty regularly, and see her weekly at church and at school functions. To me it should be obvious, I guess some people are just oblivious. Anyway, when you are working so hard to loose weight, it really consumes you. It is all you think about, dream about, talk about, work-out for, eat for, sleep for, etc... To me me, the changes have been hard to see, because, well, I see myself every day and the changes have been so gradual it has been very difficult to actually see the changes, and therefore accept them. People have commented on them, but because they have been difficult for me to see, it has been hard for my mind to get wrapped around it. I guess in the end, the clothes don't lie, even when they are lying on the floor, around your ankles because they won't stay around your waist. (That's a good thing, right?) I have had major moments that are starting to nail it all down for me. I think if I have enough of them, the corners will be3 nailed into place. I was helping Chase make enough room on the bonus room floor to set up his train set. There were so many dress up clothes out that you literally couldn't see the floor. As we were cleaning them up, I picked up one of my old dresses from when I first got married. I really liked that dress and never could get rid of it. I didn't get to wear it for long, b3cause the post-married life helped me gain a few extra pounds pretty quickly. It stayed in the back of my closed for the longest time, for that time when I would loose the weight and get to wear the dress again. Well, it made it into the dress-up box and is still there. For old-time's sake, I pulled it out to see if it would fit. I was already dressed for today and so I decided that I'd just throw it on over the clothes and just not do up the buttons. Talk about nailing in the nail, I could even do up the buttons, 3even with my clothes on under the dress! Yippee! Too bad the dress is totally 90's style. It was a cute one too! I always wondered what I weighed when I got married (there were just some things that I forgot). Now I know!

Hmmmm...

I'm not really sure what I'm going to blog about yet, I just figured it has been a long time since I've posted anything, so I'd do a quick post b3efore I head off to bed. 5 words ago spurs a nice opening for this post. I've explained this to a few people, now is as good as any a time to tell the r3est of the world that I seem to have this interesting relationship with the "3" on the keyboard. For some reason many times when I type an "e" I also hit the "3" on the3 keyboard. Usually it takes just as long to explain it once to someone and then move on and leave the 3's in my words than to keep erasing them. So from now on when you see the 3's in certain words next to "e"s, it is not because I love the number 3 so much, or I am just retarded... well, maybe I am retarded, I'm just not sure yet.

Right now my life still mainly consists of walking, A LOT! We have 2 weeks and 1 day left in our family weight loss challenge. At this point I don't really care who knows how I am doing, because if you aren't doing as good as you want to be doing, it is pretty much too late. I feel like I am doing really good. I am proud of myself for how well I have done. Whether I win the money or not, I have worked so hard and I have lost a lot of weight and I have to say, "good job, Kari!". I get up in the morning, weight myself, then de3cide how far I am going to walk that morning, based on the scale. I know it sounds silly, but hey, I'm in it for the money. After my 2 weeks and one day is up, then I'll revert back to probably weighing myself just 3 times a week (which is what I did before this competition starte3d) and walking 5 miles a day, which I did NOT do before this competition started. I have resolved that if I want to keep this new body that I have worked SO hard for, it is going to probably take walking about 5 miles a day to actually keep it, so that is what I am going to do. So anyway, aft3er walking, what seems like forever, e3ach morning (in reality it is only one Raechel Ray show and part of Oprah or American Idol, or part of some other show that gets me through 64 minutes of walking on the treadmill) I feel great that I finished it! The day can b3egin. Now what? It has been nice and sunny here in Oregon? My kids keep asking if it is spring. Chase keeps asking if it is summer and when our birthdays are going to be. Poor kid. I digress. Well, I didn't really have a point to b3egin with. I'll move on.

I've been doing jewelry again. It has been a lot of fun. I've got a shop on etsy. As soon as I have a few more things posted I'll put a link up and send out a mass email for anyone that is interested in seeing what I've been up to.

Other news... Chase and Oakli both broke their glasses in the same day.


I can't think of much else to write about for now. I'll be heading to the Neurologist tomorrow for a follow-up appointmen3t. If anything exciting comes of it, I'll let you know.


Oh, I know, we took the kids to Monster Jam this last weekend. We went with our good friends the Newells. We got tickets several months ago and we had a great time with them. They all loved seeing Grave Digger and we got to go early for the "Pit Party". We got to go down and take pictures with all the trucks up close, that was great. One of the moster trucks even rolled, it was great fun. Did I mention that it was loud? Oh yeah, it was loud.