The year is ending

Boy this year went by fast didn't it?! Almost 2012 already, which means it's almost the twins' first birthday! And we are getting past the crazy holiday months into the slower cold months, so hopefully life will go a bit slower. Don't need to worry about gift ideas for weddings, Christmas, or birthdays (besides the babies, which will be easy) for a while, though next year I plan to get started on Christmas a lot earlier than I did this year! But for now I'm not even going to think about it, just going to enjoy a break from major holidays.

Crunchmaster Winner!

Thank you to those who entered the giveaway for the Crunchmaster White Cheddar Multi-Grain Crackers. Using random.org the winner is...

#1 Blair! Congrats Blair, I will be contacting you to get your information to send your prize.

Thank you all and stayed tuned for some upcoming giveaways!

Getting close

4 days until Christmas!!! You can tell by the piles of wrapped presents in my room, the tree with the lights and garland pulled off the bottom branches and the tree skirt all askew, and the empty bank account. Yep, Christmas is definitely close! I'm excited for the kids mostly, it's just so much fun watching them enjoy Christmas morning. I'm also interested to see what Hubby got me. He's been working on something in the garage, pretty sure it's not amish furniture, and there are a few other boxes with my name on them that I have no idea what they are. I'm not completely ready though. Waiting on a package so I can finish up some family gift baskets and I need to make the boys' PJ pants. Other than that I think we are done. :)

Crunchmasters Multi-grain Crackers Review and Giveaway!

I had the great opportunity to review some nutritious, healthy crackers by Crunchmaster, provided courtesy of Moms Meet.

The Crunchmaster Multi-Grain Crackers come in 3 delicious flavors: Sea Salt, White Cheddar, and Roasted Vegetable. Now, I must say I am not really a cracker person. Especially the healthy ones, haha. The never have liked the texture of wheat crackers, or the flavor. I was thinking these crackers would be similar. But the first thing I noticed is they lacked that wheat-y texture because, ta-da: no wheat! That's right, these crackers are wheat- and gluten-free. Great for people who want healthy, tasty crackers but can't eat gluten. Instead they are made from a blend of pure, California brown rice, stone-ground corn, oat fiber, and a four seed blend (they also made a Multi-Seed Cracker you may want to check out). Also, they didn't crumble wheatily (not a word? oh well!) which is nice. Instead these oven baked crackers are very crisp and solid, a bit harder than I expected; they don't leave tons of tiny crumbs with every bite.

Now for the taste. For starters, I did not even try the White Cheddar flavor. I just have never liked cheese flavored products, especially cheese crackers, yuck! So I left those to the kids, who had no problem with being my taste-testers. My two older boys ate some and thought they were too hard, but my 3-year old loved them. For the next few days I kept finding him smuggling a bag of crackers into the family room to snack on while watching cartoons. Hubby also tried them and said they were about the same as any other healthy cracker to him, good but nothing exciting. I headed first for the Roasted Vegetable. These crackers have some major taste, a lot more flavorful than I was thinking they would be. In my opinion it was actually a bit much, but I bet they would be amazing with a nice cream cheese spread or dip, which I sadly did not have on hand to try them with. Then I tried the Sea Salt. This was more to my taste; not as much flavor to deal with (guess I'm a wimp when it comes to strong flavor lol). They tasted kind of like healthy, crunchier tortilla chips. I love a nice salty snack, like popcorn or chips, so these are something I could actually see myself snacking on. They would also probably taste good with a spread or maybe cheese and meat on top.

I also shared some bags of crackers with ladies in my twin moms group, and they were so excited to try them out.

Crunchmaster Multi-Grain Crackers are a great source of fiber and whole grains, use natural ingredients, and are free from cholesterol and saturated fats. A nice healthy snack that you can enjoy as is or with a tasty spread or dip. You can learn more about them at the Crunchmaster website and Facebook page. You can buy them at many major retailers, including WalMart, Kroger, Meijer, and many more.

Would you like a chance to win a case (12 bags) of Crunchmaster White Cheddar Multi-Grain Crackers? Well, one lucky reader will!

To enter simply visit the Crunchmaster website and comment here to let me know what other product they have that you think sounds good.

This contest will end Tuesday December 20th at 10pm EST. Contest open only to U.S. residents. Make sure there is a way to contact you from your profile or leave your email in the comment.

*Disclaimer: I received this product for free from the sponsor of the Moms MeetSM program, May Media Group LLC, who received it directly from the manufacturer. As a Moms MeetSM blogger, I agreed to use this product and post my opinion on my blog. My
opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of May Media Group LLC or the manufacturer of the product.*

New look

Anyone notice the changes to my blog? A few weeks ago evidently the host for my previous blog template stopped doing them so I had to find a new one. If I had time I would just make my own, but for now I'll go with whatever free cute templates I can find. Thought this one was fun and girly. The more boys I have the more I feel like surrounding myself with girly things to counteract it lol. :D

Put a ring on it

A few days ago, one of my Facebook friends was asking if anyone else would be sad if they had to get a new wedding ring because it wasn't the original one they put on when married. I said I would be sad. I love my ring and even if I got an exact copy of it, it wouldn't have the same meaning as the one I've been wearing for over 8 years. I'm not sure if my Hubby feels the same. He doesn't have a fancy ring like the triton wedding bands, it's a simple band but I had it engraved on the inside and I still like to see it. :) I've never seen the reason to buy new rings for anniversaries and such, my wedding ring is perfect to me. Of course, I'm not really that into jewelry so it's pretty much the only jewelry I wear regularly. I only take it off if I'm kneading bread or making meatloaf or other stuff with lots of raw meat, and then my hand feels so weird not to have my ring on. I'm hoping this ring lasts a nice long time.

Gardening

Brr, it's getting cold! I wish we could just bypass winter and head straight into spring. Though it's nice not to have to worry about the garden for a few months. It got a little neglected this year due to the babies, though we did get more tomatoes than usual. I should have gotten the area all cleaned out and composted and stuff before it got cold, but now it's too cold for me to want to go out, so it'll have to wait until it warms up again. I would love to have a rotating composter to put our leaves and stuff in to use for the garden. I have a compost box but it's a pain. I think next year I'll probably stick to mostly tomatoes again. I don't have much luck with anything else lol. I hardly even got any peas this year, which I normally don't have a problem with. I'm really not that great with gardens lol, but it's worth it if I at least get a few fresh tomatoes. :)

Halloween!

Thought it was about time to put up some cute pictures. So here we go with Halloween! We had a great Halloween. The 28th we went to Hubby's work party where the boys got to trick or treat around the office. The 29th we had a Halloween party and trunk or treat with my moms of twins club. And then Halloween the boys had their school costume parades and Hubby took the older 3 trick or treating that night while I stayed home with the babies to hand out candy. A fun weekend, but way too much candy! I actually made some of the costumes this year because I didn't want to go buy any and Jason and Jakey wanted to be something we didn't already have costumes for. Jason was a wizard, I let him pick out the material. Jakey was a ghost. Nathan was excited to wear one of the older boys' old Mario costume. And the babies were gnomes. I just made their hats and belts, the rest was just clothes we had.

At Hubby's work party. Nathan would not stop looking at the talking butler thing lol.


The school costume parade.



We carved pumpkins the Friday before. Hubby's has Idaho and #1, mine is the stack of pumpkins with BOO and a ghost, we let Jason and Jakey design what they wanted theirs to look like so Jason's is the 4-eyed, 2-nosed pumpkin, and Jakey's funny shaped pumpkin got 2 faces. Nathan's had a Blue's Clues pawprint, and for the babies we just did I and C.

LOL I just realized I posted the pumpkins a few posts down already. Seriously my memory stinks!

Adjustments needed

My back has been killing me lately. I often get ribs out of place which sends shooting pain through my back. It sucks when I'm holding babies and suddenly feel like I'm being stabbed. It wasn't so bad when we had chiropractors covered by insurance, but our new insurance doesn't cover it. It's not bad enough to need laser back surgery or anything, but an occasional adjustment would be nice. I also get migraines when my neck gets out of place, and having 2 babies to hold and nurse makes that happen more from the extra pressure and strain across my upper back. I always love getting into my nice soft bed at night and stretching out, feels so good. I sleep pretty good too (besides waking to feed babies) because my bed is so comfortable and relaxing after a day with the kids.

Getting educated

I'm so glad I have such a wonderful husband. He has always been extremely helpful with the house and kids, but since I started school he has taken on even more. He's willing to work harder taking care of things at home so that I can finish my education so that if I ever need to work I'll have more available to me than fast food, call centers, or Baggage Porter Jobs. Not that those are bad, I've done a few of those jobs to supplement our income at times, but if my husband ever was unable to get work we'd need something that pays more than minimum wage. Which will hopefully never be an issue *knock on wood*. In a year and a half I should be done with my Associate's degree, and 2 years from that I could have my Bachelor's.

Pumpkins

This year we had a lot of pumpkins to carve. First, our family grew by two members and we like to have pumpkins even for the babies, and second we got 2 free pumpkins at a party last week. So 9 pumpkins and since we don't trust the kids with knives that meant that Hubby and I had to carve all those pumpkins. Jason and Jakey were in charge of cleaning out the guts and separating the seeds so I could try roasting them. Hubby did the most carving. I wish we had some actual pumpkin carving tools, or maybe box cutters would work better than steak knives. Both of us had sore hands by the time we were done but they turned out good. We let Jason and Jakey design the faces on their pumpkins. Nathan's is a Blue's Clue's pawprint because he loves that show. The babies' just have I and C. Hubby's is the great Idaho #1 one and mine is the BOO tower with a ghost on one side.

Finding time to sew

I've been busy the last week, like always lol. But I finally had to get out my sewing machine again to make some costumes for my boys. I don't get a lot of chance to sew lately, but I didn't want to go spend money on costumes this year. Jason wanted to be a wizard, Jakey wanted to be a ghost, Nathan is luckily to young to really care what he is so he got to wear a Mario costume we already had, and I made the babies garden gnomes. So cute. I'll have to get a good pic of all of them together when they are dressed up tomorrow. I have a bunch of other projects on my sewing list but I don't see myself getting the time to do them any time soon. I do need to make a baby shower gift for a friend before Wednesday. Hopefully I can find time for that. I normally buy baby shower gifts, and these ones from berries.com look so cute, because I normally run out of time to make something. We'll see what I have time for this week!

MyMemories Winner!

Thank you to those who entered the MyMemories Suite scrapbook software giveaway! We have a lucky winner chosen by random.org...

#5 is Tiffany H! Congratulations! I will be contacting you on how to redeem your prize.

If you didn't win you can still order this software and get $10 off using the code STMMMS6534, which also gives you $10 off anything else at mymemories.com.

Are you ready for some football?

I don't watch a lot of TV. For one, usually if it's on the kids have cartoons on, and secondly, I just have other things to do with my time. But now that it's football time that's what is on our TV every Sunday. We don't have cable or satellite but we have one of those digital antennas for tv and so we watch the regular broadcast games. We are Patriots fans and they've been doing good so far this year. I never really cared for watching football before I met Hubby but now I love it. :)

Fall break is not nearly long enough

The weekends go by way too quickly these days. Last weekend, Thursday through Saturday, was Fall Break from school for me so I didn't have class Thursday or Saturday and it went by so fast. This week I have a couple papers to get done for my culture class Thursday so I need to get those done. I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately with school and appointments and life. When I get a day off I like to just lounge around and do nothing. I'd love some comfy nursing scrubs to relax in, I don't really have a lot of lounging clothes. But being lazy doesn't help because then the housework piles up. I think I'd be able to handle everything better if I was able to sleep all night and feel rested, but the babies still wake up often. But I know that won't last forever so I just live with it. And I don't mind some nights, sitting there in the dark nursing Isaac, or having Caleb cuddled up next to me, I know I will miss this time when they are so cute and little and dependent on me.