Beauty From Chaos

The move went great,  I even had a full 13 hours to myself on Saturday the day after we moved, and I busted my tail to get just about everything unpacked.  There are even pictures hanging on the wall (thanks to the previous renters who left their nails and screws up, i just kinda threw the pictures up in no form of organization).

I’ve been busy since we got here and finally have a chance to sit down and fill you in on how things are going. I started watching my niece and nephew on Monday, and with an 18 month old, a 25 month old, a 3.5 year old and a 9.5 year old my days are a *little* bit busy.  The majority of my days are spent changing diapers, chasing kids, feeding kids, cleaning up after kids and teaching the two older ones (home school is awesome!)

I thought I’d show you some pictures I took of our new place, just ignore the messes please.

here’s our livingroom, from the front door looking to the left.

here’s the rest of the living room  and into the kitchen. This is what you see when you first come in. To the right is a big coat closet.

And our hall, complete with a bulldozer, doesn’t every hall need construction vehicels?

The first door on the right  (right in front of the dozer) is the office and drum room, i couldn’t get a good picture of it, just imagine two desks, a book shelf and a pile of drums and you got it.

The first door on the left is the bathroom, another room I didn’t show you because well, it’s a toilet, shower and sink.  the last door on the right is our bedroom, again, I didn’t include that picture.   The end of the hall is a linen closet, and the last door on the right is the girls’ room.

The girls room from their door, pardon the horrible lighting.

The girls room from in front of the window. and please excuse the pile of stuff yet to be unpacked and put away on their dresser. Since then it has been taken care of

The kitchen from in front of the back door. You can see my huge pile of clean dishes and into the toy room/dining room

Here is the dining section of the huge den/toy room/ closed in car port.  As you can see, toys make their way into this section, but that’s ok.

And the toy room completely full of toys. what a mess.  It also has been cleaned since this picture was taken.

and our deck, which gets a nice amount of morning sun and I can’t wait for it to warm up enough for us to take advantage of it!

There you have it. Our new place in a nutshell. oh aside from the outside….  I forgot to take that picture.

I just want to let everyone know (wait, does anyone even look at this blog anymore since I spent 2 months not blogging?!) Anyway.. What I wanted to tell everyone was Today I am mailing in a check that will pay off our car! NO more car payments and one step closer to being debt free. Now that our car is paid off, we are going to be putting half of our car payment towards a personal loan we have. Making double payments on that will have it paid off in less than a year!  Then it will just be our school loans.

YAY!

We got Lexi and Caylee this little tent thing to play in for Christmas and lately Lexi has been sleeping in it at night. She cracks me up. she has the nicest bed I’ve ever slept in, well second to the California king memory foam bed. Yet she wants to sleep on the floor in the little tent! It’s adorable either way I guess!

I’ve found the half marathon I want to run, it’s called the Dismal Swamp Stomp half marathon. Doesn’t that sound fun? It’s in Chesapeake, VA, it’s flat and on a paved trail that runs right next to a swamp through the “wilderness”. It looks like fun. Plus, I can turn the trip into a mini vacation. There are a few state parks around Virginia beach, I’m hoping to hear a big YES from my husband that we will commit to this! a nice camping trip at the beach with my family sounds like a ton of fun, add to it running my first half marathon and it will be a perfect trip. Now to get my knees to cooperate.

This lifestyle change has been great for me, it’s my own little quick weight loss plan. I’m at 16lbs and hope to lose another 14. I don’t want to call it a diet, yes I’m watching what I’m eating, but I’ve still allowed myself a cookie or two here, a piece of pizza there, even a donut the other day. One thing I’ve learned is that I need to eat enough! When I first signed up with sparkpeople (about 3 weeks into my progress) I had hit a plateau, it was on accident one day I ate more calories than normal and started losing weight again. Some days it is hard for me to even get in 1200 calories, on those days I like to splurge with a cookie, or a couple glasses of milk. At least with the milk it’s good for me! he he.

Anyway, I’m really excited to run my first half marathon, I have to rest tomorrow even though it’s a running day though. I hurt my knee doing Jillian’s 30 day shred Friday night. Stupid butt kicks. I kicked my knee up too high towards my butt and it hurt SO BAD. Then I tried to do my 4 mile run yesterday and only made it two. Normally any aches and pains I have go away by the time I hit mile 1, but when my knee was still screaming out to me I decided to just turn around. Did I mention I was walking on it pretty much all day Saturday? Today it’s pretty big and kinda sore. Hopefully by Wednesday it will be ready to resume all running!

Yah, I’m the author of this blog. I’ve been missing for months now and I am sorry. There were all sorts of weird issues that took a couple people a month or so to figure out how to fix, and during that time I couldn’t even log in to write to you! Then it got fixed thanks to Ashley’s husband and my husband! and then we got busy.

So to catch you up on life real quick…

Christmas was great, New years was great…. and that brings us to now.

Lexi is getting so smart, she’s really taking an interest in letters and writing them. She knows how to spell a few words, like Farm and Hello, and will write just about anything if you tell her what letters to write.

Caylee is making progress on the sleeping, for about 5 nights in a row she pretty much slept through the night. Sometimes she’d wake up around 5:30, but we were able to get her back to sleep, if she sleeps through the whole night then she’s normally up for good at 6ish, which is earlier than I like to wake up!

I’m training for a half marathon, I’m still not certain I’m going to run it, I’m having IT band issues.  I’m quitting my facebook addiction. I know too many people (Me included) who have been having issues with their computers since they started using facebook. Mine is so bad I will type a sentence and often have to wait 2-3 minutes before it will show up.

My hubby is still unemployed, he’s been trying to get into graphic art stuff, until yesterday morning when his computer decided to die. And with the issues mine is having he can’t even run the programs he needs on it.

Yesterday was an interesting day, between both of our computers being out of service (mine we got back working) and the toaster broke and to top it off our car stopped running.  Eugene went to a store, and when he went to start it it wouldn’t start. He knows what the problem is, it’s the starter, and we can fix it for free, once he takes the old one off he can go get a replacement for free because it’s under warranty.  There are just a few problems, the car isn’t here, it’s our only car, and it’s raining and nasty outside.  So it looks like we might be stuck at home for a few days until we can either get the car here, or get to the car!

The biggest piece of news I have is that we’re moving!  We’ve been struggling to pay our bills each month for a few months, and we’ve also been wanting to be closer to family. It just so happens that the cost of living is a lot cheaper up by Eugene’s family. We found a 3 bedroom house, with a livingroom and den for $125 less a month than we pay for our 2 bedroom apartment here.  I’m super thrilled to have SPACE. oh and a house where we don’t have to worry about loud neighbors, or being too loud for neighbors. I’m also going to be watching Eugene’s niece and nephew, so that will be fun! The niece is homeschooled, so I’ll be taking care of teaching her which will help me stick to a schedule of teaching Lexi too.

I have a slightly funny story… The store that the car is sitting at is a liquor store. Eugene went to pick up boxes for us to start packing. Talk about a good place for our car to break down!!!

It’s been about 1 month since I was able to login and blog, but I’m back, and I’ll be updating and filling you all in on what’s going on here next week. I promise!

I actually didn’t get around to crafting any yesterday or today while craft day was supposed to be going on. Well, I made another tutu. But here’s what I did a week or so ago..

Dora and Map for Lexi, a Christmas stocking for Caylee, a quilt for the doll bed Lexi’s Uncle is making them, I managed to sew two years worth of hands on our tree skirt, and made a reversible cape and mask for Lexi’s friend. He can be super J or batman, whichever he wants!

I apologize that my words are not near the pictures. I’m still working on figuring out why it’s messing up like that. Sorry!

Check out The Natural Mommy for other crafts!

We were superheros

attacked and captured the evil villain

cut off all my hair

found Caylee in the dryer

and the dishwasher

Went to Tennessee and jumped in leaves

some of us didn’t like it at first

but then it was ok

we got to play with KK,

Meatball

and pops

Then we got to meet Savannah!

and papa, Grammie, Aunt Bethany, Uncle Ken, Aunt Karra (and all her kids) came to visit!

aunt Bethany brought Abbie, our favorite puppy

We played Boccee ball!

Watched the movie UP with all our cousins

spent lots of time with family

went to the park with Grammie and papa!

took a rest

went down slides with Aunt Bethany

and got attacked by Uncle Ken!

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It was a great month!

Last night was a little better than the night before. She woke up more times, but fell asleep a little faster with less screaming.

Today was ok I guess! There was a lot of whining by both girls, which made mommy in a less than great mood. However, The hubs went to go volunteer at The Upper Room tonight, which meant I had to put Caylee to sleep for the first time since we weaned her. I must admit I’ve been enjoying not having to do that! I was a little nervous, but she didn’t even ask to nurse! She snuggled for a minute, “talked” to me, then I laid her in her crib and she was out! Lexi threw more of a fit about going to bed!

Actually, I am concerned about Lexi… We’ve been letting her sleep on our floor for at least part of the night each night since Monday. We don’t want Caylee to wake her up with her screaming, so we thought that would be the best way, but now she’s wanting to sleep on our floor and not her bed. Hopefully once Caylee is sleeping better we can get Lexi back in her room all night. I am excited for the night that Caylee sleeps all the way through it and I can remember what a full nights rest is all about!!!

The weaning is going great, I guess. Â The second night was even better than the first, she slept until 3am. Â She’s never slept that long! Â She felt right asleep after just a few minutes, woke again at 6:30, fell right back to sleep and then was up at 8 for the day.

Yesterday afternoon/evening was a little rough, she was pretty whiny and asked to nurse a couple times. We were strong though and didn’t cave. She woke up at 1ish and nothing would calm her down. She ended up not falling completely back to sleep until almost 3, then woke up again around 5ish and gave us more trouble.

When she woke up at 1, I sent my husband in to comfort her, and I don’t know if that is what made it that bad, or if she’s just finally realizing that she hasn’t nursed in a while. Â Nothing was working to comfort her, so I left her in her room to cry for awhile. She kept dozing off and then waking up screaming again, She never screamed for more than 5 minutes at a time, and we went in 3 times between 1 and 3 to comfort her. She did the same thing at 5 when she woke up but it didn’t last as long. On a good note, she woke up at 8 happy and saying “momma! momma!” which she’s NEVER done. She always wakes up screaming.

I’m proud that I managed to not give in and nurse her back to sleep, but I really hope tonight goes better. So far today she’s been kinda fussy too, I’m starting to wonder if there are some teeth coming in causing part of the fussing. We’ll see!