Shiloh's room

This past weekend we cleared out the room that will be Shiloh's and began painting. I had an idea in my head of what I wanted, but once we got going, I realized that the idea in my head was not coming out on the walls. So we re-painted over some of our color choices. The final product is closer to the idea in my head, but not exactly the idea. But overall I am happy with the way it turned out. Here we are in all our painting glory painting the brown on the lower half of the walls. Check it out, it's another one of Cooper's awesome "smile" faces. Then we painted a few brown stripes on the upper half of one wall.
Then we put yellow stripes on and painted the upper half of the other three walls yellow.
After doing all the brush work, I had just a little bit of paint left in the pan. So I thought I'd mark the room as Shioh's.

Once we got all the yellow on, I realized I didn't like it, but decided to wait until the rest of the room was done to make a final decision.

Then the dark pink and orange stripes when on. The dark pink turned out to be more of a purple, not at all what I had in mind.So once we got the light pink and green stripes on, we decided to change the dark pink/purple to a hotter pink. At this point all the painting was done and both Jeff and I decided that the yellow had to go! So we changed the three upper walls to green.
The yellow stripes also had to go! I really didn't want to buy more paint, but I wanted a lighter green. So I took some of the green we had and mixed in a little of the yellow and made a light green, so this is what we changed the yellow stripes to.

After all the painting was done we put the crib together. Mason has been begging to put the new crib together since we got it, but we kept telling him that we wanted to wait until after we painting. So literally, as soon as we cleared the room of all the painting stuff, out came the crib box.

Here is the crib all done. The boys did a great job putting it together. My sister, DeAnne is helping me, or should I say, she is making the quilt and bed skirt. All I have to do is drive to Kennewick to have her put the quilt and bed skirt together. Hopefully I will be making a trip down next week.

Boys play

One night while Jeff was gone, I was painting Shiloh's room. The boys helped me paint for a few minutes. Once they were bored with painting they entertained themselves with the camera. They pretended to be wild animal hunters, on the look out of wild animals.

They found some really cute tigers don't you think?

Then they started taking random pictures of things. They would bring me the camera and say something like, "Oh my goodness mom, it's the strangest thing! Someone has the same train table as us!" Or "Can you believe it?! Someone took our recycle truck!"

They took probably close to 30 pictures and after they took each picture they would come in and tell me all about it.

This picture puzzled Mason, he couldn't figure out how his hand had turned red when he took a picture of it.

Sunset

These are just some pictures of the sky during sunset. Just thought I'd share them.

Cooper's 3rd Birthday Party

Friday night, after eating the yummy dinner Jeff made for Cooper's birthday dinner (see post below), we had some family over to celebrate Cooper's 3rd birthday. Cooper helped make his cake, and just like any good baker, he had to try out the batter. I'm pretty sure he liked it.
Cooper is REALLY into Percy the train. Percy is Cooper's best friend and serves most of the same purposes as a security blanket does for most kids. Here's my not so Martha Stewart attempt at making a Percy cake.
Singing to the birthday boy.

We only got a little bit of singing on video. Cooper was really cute. He sang to himself.

After cake and ice cream he opened his presents.
Clothes from Grandma and Grandpa Borders.

A card and money from Grandma and Grandpa Meador

Look at Cooper's face in this one. This is his new "smile" face. We have other pictures of him doing this same thing that will be posted later.

The boys had earned enough money for a Wii. We found a really great deal on Craigslist that had the Wii, two controllers, two nunchucks, and four games (including Rock band) all for less than it would have cost to buy just the Wii with one controller! We saved these two games for Cooper and Mason to open on Cooper's birthday.

Cookin' It Up: With Jeff

I have been trying to make a special dinner when its somebody's birthday. Usually I will ask them what they want. With Cooper, he would probably just say pepperoni, so I had to think out of the box. So because I had to work on Cooper's birthday I had some extra time to get inspired. And after a couple of shows on the food network I had my idea. The first thing you see below is "Goody Girl Championship Potatoes."

Just some of the ingredients for your reading pleasure. Lots!! of butter, colby-jack cheese, bacon, bacon and more bacon, red and green onions and some seasonings and the red potatoes. A true southern meal (A heart attack waiting to happen, but Shiloh sure loved it.)

Next item below is "Chicken Georgia". Wow! I must say and not just to toot my own horn, I have never made chicken this good or this juicy. And it was so simple to make, seasoned chicken with sweet onions, mushrooms and butter, smothered in mozzarella cheese.

I crossed my fingers hoping everything would turn out well. The food network didn't let me down. It was a hit. In fact I was full until noon the next day. (Which is highly unusual for me.)

Both the recipes are available on the food network.

So what's up next on Cookin' It Up:With Jeff

Southern Style Sheppard's Pie.

Well child check up

Mason and Cooper both had their well child check ups today. I love that their birthdays are so close together! I can get away with scheduling their appointments together so that I don't have to be at the Doctor office so much. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind going to our Doctor, in fact, I think Mason and Cooper would LOVE it if I didn't schedule their appointments together, it would give them one more excuse to see their favorite Doctor. I am so not exaggerating, they both love their Doctor and get so excited when I tell them we are going. I have learned to tell them the morning of, so I don't have to hear for a week, "are we going to the Doctor's today?"

Mason weighs 49lbs.= 87% and is 46" tall= 95%

Cooper weighs 39 lbs.= 96% and is 39" tall= 85%

They are both doing really well and are meeting all the correct milestones.

Birthday boy

Today is Cooper's 3rd birthday! This little man has brought so much joy into our lives! He is a great son and brother to Mason.

Things Cooper loves:

-Cooper loves most is FOOD. He eats, and eats, and eats. As soon as he eats a meal, he asks for a snack. As soon as he eats a snack, he asks for another snack. He literally lives to eat and eats to live.

-His favorite thing/toy would be Percy the train, from the Thomas and Friends set. He also loves to sing, and sings ALL. THE. TIME.

-He loves green, all things green.

-He loves to help me with everything, in fact right now as I write this, he has a chair pulled up to the sink and is cleaning the sink with a sponge and probably WAY more soap than needed. It can be a great thing, but sometimes he just gets in the way.

Birth. Born on Sunday August 12, 2007 at 10:44am.

First birthday
Second birthday
A few days ago. And that shirt really does fit him, he was just relaxin' lettin' it all hang out!

Happy Birthday Coop, we love you!

Shave for Steve

This handsome, but mean looking soldier is Jeff's brother Steven. He became a soldier in the United States Army on June 14 of this year. I know this couldn't have been an easy decision for him, his wife, or three young girls. He is still in boot camp and will graduate boot camp later this month. While in boot camp, Jeff and the boys have been keeping their heads shaved to show support for Steve. Here are a few pictures of my cute boys sportin' their short dews.

What a spaz!

This video is really good, a good reminder for each of us to remember and to thank those who either have served or are serving our country. I know you can't read this Steve, but thank you for your service and thank you Tricia for supporting your husband in his service. I hope Mason and Cooper grow up to be as outstanding and honorable men like their father, their uncle Steve, and both their grandfathers.

Station 95 Open House

Yesterday was Station 95's open house. This is the fire station that Jeff volunteers at. They had lots of different fire engines, the Med Star Pediatric ambulance, and a police car there for the kids to sit in and explore.

Jeff with all but two of the fire fighters at his station.Fellow fire fighters: Captain Perkins, Jeff, Brooks, Phil

Mason with Smokey. Or should I say "a human inside a suit", as Mason would say.Here we are with Smokey the Bear, AKA Jeff. Cooper didn't want anything to do with Smokey. Of course we didn't tell him until later that it was Daddy inside the suit. I wonder if we had told him right away if it would have made any difference.Maybe Cooper saw Smokey doing this to the poor fire fighter and this is way he was afraid.

After visiting with Smokey, it was off to take a look at the cool stuff. The engines.

Inside the pediatric ambulance. Both Mason and Cooper though this was really cool!

Inside ladder 91. The ladder on this truck is 95 feet tall. It was hard to convince the boys that they couldn't climb the ladder unless and until they become firefighters.Cooper driving engine 99. Safety first you know!

Observations of Cooper

While at the grocery store, Cooper was very observant....a little too observant.

There was a lady wearing a halter top, with hardly any back to it. To this he said, "That lady is naked!" Thankfully the lady was really far away from us and so I don't think she heard us. I tried to explain to him that not every one like to be modest like us, I don't know how much he understood, but that's okay.

Then there was another lady who had TONS of tattoos and even more piercings in her ears. It was a wonder that her ears were not sagging down to her toes with all the weight on them. I only noticed the ones in her ears at first. But Cooper must have noticed them all because he just had to say, right in front of her, "that lady had lots of stuff on her!" loud enough for everyone in the isle, and probably the next five isles over to hear. To this the lady said, "yes, I'm more decorated than a Christmas tree". At that comment I looked at her, with a "I'm sorry" kind of a look. It was then that I noticed the 20+ piercings on her face and the 10+ piercings on her chest area. In my head of course, I was thinking of tons of sarcastic comments I could have said about her body being decorated like a Christmas tree, but refrained out of fear that Cooper would repeat them in front of the lady. I didn't have any "lesson" for Cooper on this one. Although I guess I could have told him that sometimes it is best to keep your thoughts to yourself.

Cereal deal

It has been awhile since I've seen any really good deals at the grocery stores that I couldn't pass up. I could have passed this one up, but our cereal supply was getting dangerously low...like 20 boxes, so I figured I better take advantage of it. You too can still take advantage of this! Until this next Tuesday for every 10 Kellogg's products you buy at Safeway, a coupon good for $10 off your next purchase will print out at the register. All the items I bought were on sale for $1.99, with the only exception being the Frosted Mini Wheats at $2.99. So if you just took advantage of this deal, without any coupons, once you apply the $10.00 off coupon, you could get everything for $0.99 (or $1.99 for the FMW). That's an okay deal. But I also have kept my coupons that come in the Sunday pinch (a free paper that comes with all the coupons and some store ads from that weeks Sunday paper). I LOVE the pinch, it gives me just what I want, the coupons, while leaving out what I don't, the paper AKA the one sided, only report the bad, news. So each product I bought I was also able to put a $0.50-$1.00 off each item coupon with the product. My final bill you ask? I paid $25.29 for everything in two seperate trasactions. AND I have 1 $10.00 off my next purchase coupon, so you could say I paid $15.29 for all this, an average of $0.76 per item. 12 boxes of cereal, 5 boxes of Pop tarts (for Jeff, I find them less than tasty), 3 boxes of Nutri-Grain bars, and 1 gallon of milk.

I also ordered more coupons off ebay yesterday, so my ceral supply will soon be back up to the levels I like!

Garage Sale

Friday and Saturday we had a garage sale. I am surprised at how much we really had that we didn't need or want anymore. My main goal was to make enough money to buy Shiloh a different dresser than the one we had, and paint for her room. We reached our goal, with just a few dollars to spare, seriously!

We sold some pretty high priced items like my vanity and the dresser we had for Shiloh, and tons of smaller things. So why did we sell the dresser we had for Shiloh just to have to go out and buy another one? Well, since we had to get a new crib, the dresser did match AT ALL. The new crib is dark wood, and the dresser was very light wood. Plus the dresser had really small drawers and so couldn't fit very much in it. The dresser wasn't very sturdy, I have visions of it falling on top of one of the kids when trying to pull out a drawer. Not good.

Mason and Cooper also had a sale of their own. They sold lemonade, cookies, banana muffins, zucchini bread, and zucchini from our garden. They did really well with their sale too. They had some people just giving them a dollar or two, just for the heck of it. Or people who would give them a five dollar bill for just one or two cookies. They made about $30! They are saving that money (and any birthday money they get) for a Wii.

Cooking it up!

What do you get when you start with fresh peppers...

Throw them in a pan with onions and saute...

Add in your favorite meat (Beef in my case)...

And throw the some shredded Colby-jack cheese on top?

FAJITAS!

Now I know what you may be thinking. Why is Jeff telling us how to cook. Or for that matter why is Jeff cooking. Well since I have been laid off and even prior to that I have been cooking dinner. It started out by me cooking dinner on Sunday nights. My treat to the family. But with Crystyne being so sick initially with the pregnancy, I have picked up some hours in the kitchen. (Wish they were work hours at a place of employment, but I digress.) Any who, it was either cook or starve for the boys and me.

I wasn't to confident in the kitchen with cooking. But it turns out, that I am actually not that bad of a cook, and not just Top Raman or BBQ burgers. It shouldn't be a surprise since my grandfather and grandmother owned a restaurant and cooked all the time, it must flow in the blood.

Some of my favorite things to cook are Fajitas, Arroz con Pollo (Azteca Style), Breakfast (I love making seasoned fried potatoes with fresh peppers and onions in it.), Sauteed Chicken with Broccoli over white rice and Shish-ka-bobs. I am learning more recipes and I actually find it somewhat relaxing. (Shhh. Don't tell Crystyne, or this could be a permanent position.)

Now if only I enjoyed cleaning up the dishes that much......

Baby check up

This morning I had another Dr. appointment. I gained one pound so I am now just one pound more than I was before being pregnant. I have technically gained thee pounds total, but I also had lost two pounds when I was so sick. So would you say I have gained three pounds? or just one? My uterus is measuring a little small now, which does not surprise me because I'm am beginning to have back pain, like I did with Cooper's pregnancy, so I'm sure Shiloh will sit farther in my back just like Cooper did. Oh joy! How I loved having the back pain with Cooper! Her heart beat was 152 bpm. At my next appointment, at 27 weeks, I am scheduled to go back in for another ultrasound to make sure my placenta has moved up. My Dr. is very positive that it will have moved up by then. He said that it wasn't extremely low at the last ultrasound, so I guess I have marginal placenta previa, not complete placenta previa.

I am 23 weeks 3 days pregnant.

I'm wondering

Now that we have made our blog private, does anyone read it anymore? No one has commented since making it private. So either no one reads the blog, or nothing I write is interesting enough for anyone to comment about.

So does anyone read my blog anymore?