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OK, I'm going through my pictures now to put up some recent ones. The last time I did was May 1, which isn't as far away as I thought, so hopefully I won't have too many to catch up on. Hm, I seem to be missing some pictures. Oh nevermind, found them in a different folder, whew. This may take me awhile, cuz I also need to eat something before I start to feel sick again. :P Gets annoying having to eat every 2 hrs.

Wondeful 4th of July Weekend

Boy this past weekend sure wore me out! It was tons of fun though. We spent most of Saturday at the park with my family, eating and playing. Then we watched the fireworks. The boys enjoyed it. Jakey covered his ears the whole time, as usual. Jason fell asleep near the end, and Nathan was wide-eyed until the end when he too started to fall asleep. Last year it took us 2hrs to get out of the park because of traffic, so this year we timed it so that we started packing up a few minutes before the end and we were pulling out just as the finale finished. No traffic problems, yay! And another plus was that I didn't feel very sick at all the whole day so I got to enjoy everything! Then Sunday we had a nice relaxing day and lit some fireworks and sparklers with the boys that night. My little sis spent the night so we stayed up way too late with her, then spent Monday relaxing and playing and hubby grilled hamburgers and hotdogs for lunch. It was so nice that he had the 5th off. So it's been fun, but way too many late nights for me! I'm still trying to catch up on sleep. Hubby was awesome and let me take a nap for a few hours Sunday afternoon though. I'm going to try to get pics from this weekend, and other recent pics, up in the next few days. I hate getting months behind on that. I also have a review to put up soon (I love when companies want me to try stuff out, like promotional items and stuff) so I will get that up after some pics.

No more sweet tooth

It's funny the things that make me feel sick lately. Normally I have a major sweet tooth, but now things that are too sweet are just too much. Almost everything sounds yucky and has an awful aftertaste, though I still make myself eat every few hours so I don't get sick. Yesterday nothing at all was sounding or tasting good. I finally ate a few pickles and they were delicious, but didn't sit well. Hubby even went and bought me a sandwich at Subway because that's one thing that almost always sounds yummy, and it didn't taste as good as I'd hoped. It'll be nice to get my appetite back, hopefully soon. Also, looking at things like the lcd monitor or my iPod touch screen makes me queasy, so I haven't been spending as much time online. I spend a lot of time laying on the couch breathing slowly. Luckily Hubby is very understanding and such a big help. I'm hoping that the nausea will ease up in about a month so I can have a few months with more energy and able to eat before I get huge and uncomfortable lol.

Busy summer days

I keep thinking I need to get some more pictures of the boys up, but I forget and time goes by so fast. I can't believe I'm 8 weeks pregnant already, seems like just a few days ago that I found out. I guess it helps that there's always so much going on it seems. Tuesdays Hubby has to go to mutual with the young men at church. 3 Wednesdays a month I either have Relief Society president meetings or our RS activity. Then there's the kids I watch, appointments for checkups, orthodontist, dermatologist, etc and family stuff. Tonight we are planning to go see Toy Story 3 with my sister and her family because it's her husband's birthday. Tomorrow is the children's patriotic parade at the church and I have to make 2 dozen cupcakes before then. Then we have a birthday party to go to after that. I swear summer's are just so full of stuff to do and places to go. I still need to find something from CSN that I want to review. Since they have everything from outdoor garden lighting to bedding, it makes it hard to decide what to get, though I have one thing. Just need to get some energy to do it. My house is suffering because I'll get one thing clean and be wiped out for the rest of the day.

Drumroll, please...

The winner of the giveaway for the $20 CSNstores.com gift certificate is...



Comment #4, Just Me!!! Congratulations! I do not have an email for Just Me, but I will let her have until tomorrow evening to contact me to claim her prize.

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway!

Coming up...

I am very happy that I get another chance to review an item from CSNstores.com! I love that they have over 200 online stores so you can find everything from a sofa to shoes to exercise equipment. I'm the kind of person that likes to do all my shopping in one place, so it's nice that at CSNstores I can do that.

Also, make sure you enter my latest giveaway, it ends in just 2 days!

Smiles

I'm so happy that I'm getting more people entering my latest giveaway! It was kind of sad only getting one entrant last time lol. I know this blog isn't always very interesting, it'd probably be more interesting as an insurance blog, but it's nice to see that people stop by once in a while. I do want to start posting pictures more, I just need to get in the habit of uploading them from my camera more often. Usually by the time I do there are hundreds or thousands and it's just a pain to go through them. Maybe sometime this week I will find the time to post some from the last few months, I know I have some cute ones. How can I not? My kiddos are pretty adorable!

CSN Stores Review and a GIVEAWAY!!!

I was recently contacted by CSN and offered a product to either review or giveaway. Being the nice person I am, I really wanted to be able to review something and giveaway something. And they were happy to work with me on that! It took me days to decided what I wanted to order, because they have so much to choose from! They have kitchen items, home furnishings, baby stuff, and so so so much more. I finally decided on a few kitchen items, because I knew they would get use.

I've been wanting a new rubber scraper/spatula. I only have one and it was getting used a lot. So I found a cool looking Calphalon Silicone Medium Scraper. It's heat resistant up to 500* so I would be able to use it while cooking and not worry about melting it. It's the perfect size for everyday cooking and dishwasher safe. I've now used it when making pancake batter, mixing together ingredients, and making cakes. It's exactly what I needed.

I also ordered something else. I love my Pyrex baking dishes but having only one 9x13 and one 8x8 wasn't enough because often one was dirty when I needed it or I needed 2 for what I was making. So I found a Pyrex 5 Piece Bakeware Set. Included in the set is one 9x13 pan with lid, one 7x11 pan, one 8x8 pan, and one loaf pan. I was mostly interested in the loaf pan because I hate how rusty my metal loaf pans get. Unfortunately I haven't made bread since getting them so I haven't been able to try it out yet, but I have used the 9x13 and 8x8. I seriously love Pyrex glass baking pans. For one they don't rust like metal pans. Two, food doesn't stick to it as much as my other pans. And three, they are easy to clean. Plus they look so nice!

So I am very happy with the items I chose to review. They are exactly what I wanted and I know they will get much use.

GIVEAWAY
And now on to the fun part! One of you lucky readers is going to get the chance to win a $20 gift certificate good at any of the CSN stores! Entering is simple. Just leave me a comment saying one thing you think you would like from one of their stores. You may also earn one extra entry by either Tweeting, Facebooking, or blogging about this giveaway, and leave another comment saying that you did. Make sure you have a valid email address I can contact you at if you win.

This giveaway will close on Saturday June 19th at 10pm EST.

The giveaway is now closed! Winner to be announced soon!

*Disclosure: I was given these products for free to review. All opinions of these products are my own.*

Morning sickness + tummy bug = torture

I have another review I've been meaning to get up (and a GIVEAWAY!!!) but this last week has been pretty crazy. We went up to Idaho last Saturday (4hr drive plus a few stops to see friends and family) to pick up our boys and then came back Sunday. Unfortunately my morning sickness began to set in Saturday, making for a long uncomfortable ride where I just wanted to go lay down. I typically get very mild morning sickness, usually just nausea most of the day with no throwing up (I only threw up my first pregnancy, not my other two). So I pretty much expected that again, and that held true.

Until yesterday. Oh my goodness, yesterday sucked. First off I hadn't gotten enough sleep because I woke up at 3:30am and my stomach felt so bad, even after some crackers and water, I barely got any sleep after that. Then once I pulled myself out of bed at 6:30ish I knew it was going to be a close call. I tried to hurry and get the baby his milk and get myself some breakfast, since eating something usually helps. But I was not fast enough. Luckily I was already in the bathroom when it hit me, and luckily I only had a little crackers and water in my stomach. Ugh, throwing up really stinks. I was finally able to get some cereal in my to help but my stomach was still all crampy and sick feeling for the rest of the day. Thanks to Jason I'd gotten the stomach bug he'd had the day before to add onto my nausea. Nothing at all sounded good to eat. I forced myself to eat an apple and some canned peaches for snacks, and finally made myself a peanut butter and jam sandwich, which was the first thing all day to settle my stomach down a bit. I spent most of the day lying on the couch. Every time I had to get up to help the kids with something (I had 3 extras that I babysit) I felt woozy and sick, so I tried to do as little as possible. My wonderful sister-in-law came and took Jason and Jakey and the 7yr old I watch to the park for a few hours. Nathan and the 2yr old I watch went down for a nap, the 5yr old girl played quietly for a bit, and I was able to get a much needed nap.

Later, when Hubby came home, I was on the couch again and he asked me to come help bring in some groceries. I dragged myself up and began putting away the milk and suddenly knew that I should probably make my way to the bathroom again. Hubby was talking to me about something but I just held up my hand and walked by him. Good thing cuz a minute later all the food I'd painstakingly forced myself to eat throughout the day came back out. Ugh. What a waste. I made dinner for the family, Hamburger Helper, but could barely do it. Just the smell and sight of the cooking meat was making me sick again. I'd hold my breath to stir it for a second then leave the room to lay on the couch for a few minutes. Then I tried one of the noodles to check if it was done and it made me gag. So when it was finished I hurried and ate a bowl of cereal myself and told Hubby to wait until I was out of the room to eat dinner with the boys. What a good guy. (If he'd been home instead of running errands at the time, I'm sure he would have just made dinner completely for me.)

I lay around more after dinner and finally felt ok enough to do a load of dishes and then made myself a bowl of oatmeal to eat before bed. Hubby had picked up some lemon drop candies for me (love that man!) on his way home from work so I sucked on those all evening and they helped a ton. He also got me some Special K cereal bars that I'd asked for so I have something up by the bed to eat during the night. I ate one in the middle of the night and I think that helped me from feeling so bad when I got up today. That and the tummy bug was short lived, thank heavens.

I still feel kind of yucky, but not on the verge of throwing up at all times like yesterday. That means I should take this opportunity to clean up the pig sty that is my house. It got sorely neglected yesterday. Makes me really feel sympathy for the women who have bad morning sickness for months. I don't know how they do it, just one day of that wiped me out and made me question my sanity for wanting to get pregnant again.

So, I really hope I don't have many days like that, but I'm going to try to really enjoy the days that I feel ok. I'd better get up and eat a snack soon, and I should work on the kitchen while the boys are picking up their toys in the family room. Then if I continue to feel ok I promise to get that review (no, it's not an est affiliate marketing program) and giveaway up later today, so keep an eye out!

I built it (mostly) myself!

For months now I've been dreaming of stuff I could build myself. It started when a friend of mine, Alicia, posted a beautiful table she made inspired by the site Knock-Off Wood. KOW quickly became one of my very favorite sites. Ana posts easy plans to build furniture that is a knock off of popular furniture like Pottery Barn. She gives you the instructions for what you need to buy, the cuts to make, and then how to put it all together. I have a long list of things I want to make including a picnic table, play table for the boys, a rustic bench, and a ton more. Unfortunately, although cheaper than buying all new furniture, you still need to buy the wood, and so I waited patiently until we had a little extra cash before starting our first project. One thing on my list of things to do was a recycling center so our garbage cans wouldn't be sitting under the desk smelling up my computer time. Hubby picked that one idea out of my whole list of things that he would like to get done first.

This week our two older boys are up in Idaho at Grandma Cindy's house so we had a little more free time and he figured this would be the perfect time to get started. I drew up some modified plans because we have a large kitchen but only one tiny wall of available space, so I had to make it fit our needs. We headed to Home Depot on Monday to pick out our wood. I got to be in charge in picking out the wood and having the nice worker there make the cuts I needed. They weren't perfect, but a lot better than we could have done with just a circular saw. Because the cuts weren't exact, the end result wasn't perfectly square, but it still looks and works just fine. I really did do most of the work myself. Hubby made an excellent human clamp while I screwed boards together, and he did some sanding when my arms got tired. He also did the angle cuts on the inside braces with our skill saw (boy would I love a miter saw!). We got the whole thing put together that day. Then on Wednesday I painted it. A coat of primer, then two coats of semi-gloss white. Thursday morning I ran to the store for some spray-on poly and put a couple coats of that on. Finally this morning I was able to bring it into the kitchen, reassemble it, and start using it! Here it is:


The inside. I added a removable shelf for our recycle box on the top. I also used those little brown shelf holders from a bookshelf as stoppers for the base.

All ready to go! (Yes, I use an old diaper box for our recycle box, cut to fit the space just right.)

And my adorable little helper.

Thank you Ana for inspiring me to make something! I am very proud of myself (and Hubby) for our first piece of homemade furniture! I can't wait to make something else.

An Announcement!!!

I have a super hard time keeping secrets. The fact that I've been able to keep this a secret for a whole week is pretty good for me lol. So here it is!

Notice the shirts? Yep, that's right, they ALL say BIG brother, even Nathan's. We are expecting baby #4 in February! We are thrilled! So far I'm feeling great. A little more hungry, but that's to be expected. This a time I can eat a little more without worrying about safe weight loss pills lol. That's why I'm really trying to eat healthier lately though. A girl would be nice this time, but of course I make adorable boys so another would be good too. :)

Playtime at the park!

We've been taking advantage of the recent good weather to get outside more. A few weeks ago we walked to a park about a mile down the road and let the boys play for awhile.





Then another day we went to another park with my sister's family for a picnic. It was so much fun. We need to plan to do it more often. I've read on eczema treatment reviews that sunlight is good to help clear it up, so hopefully getting out more will help Nathan be more clear.




I love my family and spending time with them. :)

Party Pics

Here's some pictures from Jakey's birthday party today.

Starting into the pile of presents

Nick Jr coloring book, he was very happy

My sister got her baby one of these bubble mowers a few weeks ago for his 1st birthday, and Jakey has been asking for one every time we asked him what he wanted for his birthday.

The boys have been loving watching Pokemon lately, so Grandma Laurie got him this cool shirt

Nathan and my sister's baby playing with the keyboard, just so cute :D

I'm glad the day got brighter so I didn't have to worry about Murray Feiss lighting or anything. I love getting the natural light in, it makes for much better pictures.

Party food

I am really trying to eat healthier this year. Of course, then I have days like today where that pretty much goes out the window. We had Jakey's 4th birthday party today. His birthday is June 1 but we had it this weekend. It was a lot of fun, lots of family and food. And cupcakes, mmm. Days like this make me wish for supplements I could take to make up for the unhealthy eating. I do take my daily vitamins, drink lots of water, and try eat more fruits and veggies, but what I really need to work on is cutting back on the junk.

Email

Sometimes I'm surprised to realize I've had the same email address ever since my family got Internet at least 12-13 years ago. I have another email address that I started probably 4 years ago because I was tired of the spam in my Hotmail account, but I still use Hotmail as my primary one. I get tons of junk mail for things like winning some foreign lottery, helping some foreign banker who wants to give me his millions of dollars, searching for online life insurance, and all that, and I really don't mind anymore. I quickly scan through my junk folder for stuff that may have been tossed that I do want, but then I just delete it all. The few seconds it takes doesn't bother me much. And I have the email from my Gmail account all forwarded to my Hotmail so I just get it all in one place. OK, I just got lost in some memories and my train of thought got off track, not sure where I was going with the post lol.