April Fools Day!

As a child, I used to hate this day.  My classmates would always tell me things and I, being the naive child, would believe them, and they would shout out "April Fools!" and I would just feel so crestfallen that they would do that to me.  As an adult, I'm still the naive little girl, and my husband sometimes pulls pranks on me.  I want to prank him, but I don't know what I want to do to get him real good.  I had ideas on what to do, but it just seems so wrong to do, so I probably won't end up doing it.  

I can't wait for my kids to get older so I can do stuff like this on them.  I also can't wait til they're a little older so I can do the whole Elf on a Shelf thing.  I am looking forward to doing that!  There are so many things I want to do with my children and have them experience.  I never got to experience a lot of things as a child, so I want my children to be able to experience things that I never got to.

I can't believe Spring Break is halfway over.  I'm sad.  But I know summer vacation is almost here so I am looking forward to that.  We've been eating a lot of leftovers lately so no new recipes to post.  But I'll post one tomorrow.

Time is flying by!

I can't believe that in a couple of weeks my little boy will be one.  Time sure flew by on this one because it sure feels like it was yesterday when we went to the hospital.  Why is it that when children enter in your life that time flies by?  I remember when I was a kid, all I wanted was time to fly by because I wanted to be an adult and not have to answer to my mother or father.  But now that I am an adult and a parent, time is flying by again and all I want is for it to slow down so I can enjoy my children while they are still little and innocent.

My husband has been doing something with the water heater in the house lately.  I don't know exactly what he's doing.  All I know is he bought some tools to do the project and bought some parts to do what he needs to do.  But I'm glad I married a man that knows what he's doing when it comes to home repairs and maintenance.  Not only is he talented in that department, he's also talented in the baking department.  I got lucky with this guy!  He is one of a kind and I am forever grateful he is mine.

I have been working for the past few days on potty training my daughter.  It is seriously the most time consuming, exhausting, emotionally draining, and frustrating experience I have ever had to go through in my whole life.  I hope potty training my son will be easier, but they say boys are tougher to potty train.  But I'm hoping my daughter will help me out when it's time to potty train him.  I think potty training a child is the hardest thing a parent deals with when it comes to parenting.  Parenting never came with a manual, it's just all trial and error and you see what works for you and go with it.

Apple Crisp Cups

Here is an amazing snack my husband made today.  They are apple crisp cups.  It is seriously so delicious!  The only thing I would say is I think it would taste even better with some vanilla ice cream and caramel.  Here is the recipe.

Apple Crisp Cup

3 MacIntosh apples, peeled, cored, and chopped
1/4 cup water
2 tbs. white sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 cups flour
2 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg (optional)
1 1/2 cups butter

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease four-12 cup mini muffin tins.  Mix the apples, water, sugar, and cinnamon together in a saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat; stirring occasionally.  Simmer until apples are partially cooked, about five minutes.  Remove from the heat.  Combine flour, oats, brown sugar, one teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg in a large bowl; cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pasty cutter until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.  Place a heaping tablespoon of the crust mixture into a mini muffin cup, and press it into the cup so that it covers the bottom and pushes up the sides of the cup.  Make the crust go all the way to the top of the little mini muffin cup, and patch any holes with more crust mixture.  There will be crust mixture leftover.  Place about two teaspoons of apple filling in the crust.  Sprinkle about one teaspoon of the remaining crust mixture on the filling.  Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown for fifteen to twenty minutes.

Crafting like a busy bee

Last night I went and started working on A's project some more.  She wants 20 surprise boxes, and she wants them in a pastel color.  So I made the box white with pink papers.  On one side of the box on the outside there will be an image of a teapot cut out and on dimensionals to give it a little pop.  On the other side of the box on the outside will be a teacup that I cut out and it will also be up on dimensionals.  In the inside of the box on one side will be a yellow flower that I used to cut out using my Stampin' Up Pansy Punch.  On the other side on the inside will be a green flower, cut out using the same punch.  I will definitely post pictures when I'm done.

I like doing projects like these.  It makes for a fun day.  I hope and pray I can get more people interested in buying them soon.

Today we are going out to dinner at a friend's house.  It should be fun.  I hope the kids behave.  

Last night my husband and I started watching a new show called Secrets and Lies.  I'm recording the whole season on the DVR so we can watch it together when we have a moment to do so.  We watched the first two episodes so far.  It's pretty good.  I can't wait to watch more!

Potty training is so not fun!

I have to say that potty training my daughter is proving to be difficult.  This is by far the hardest experience I have had to deal with as far as being a parent.  I thought when she was teething it was tough because she was crying and screaming hysterically because she was in pain.  But potty training takes on a whole new level.

But the good news is that today I had her sit on her potty.  I gave her some milk to help speed up the process and gave her some dry cereal to eat as well.  Well, two hours of her sitting and getting up from the potty, she finally tinkled just a little.  My husband and I cheered for her and made it seem like the best thing ever for her.  Then after he walked away, she peed the rest of her pee on my lap.  So, I had to change her outfit and my pants.  When I got back, she started to tinkle on the floor a little bit but since I was watching her I quickly picked her up and plopped her back on the toilet.  And she peed again, but this time a lot more than I expected.  I can't wait until she is fully potty trained. I am seriously so physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted from trying to potty training her.

I hope and pray potty training my son will be easier.  

Friday is Fun Day!

It is Friday, it is Friday, it is Friday!  Can you tell how excited I am that it is Friday?  I absolutely love Fridays!  Fridays mean that my husband will be home at 4:30pm and then he is off work for the weekend!  The kids and I love when he's home because he's so fun to be around.  And next week is Spring Break so he'll be home for the whole week with us next week.  Double jackpot for me!

I have been busy, somewhat busy, with A's project.  I say somewhat busy because I have been working on it here and there when the kids are pleasant and when I don't have anything else to do around the house, like cooking or cleaning or anything.  Last night for dinner I made this dish called Corny Chicken Bake.  It was really good, just had chicken, corn bread stuffing, creamed corn, celery, and onion.  The first time I made it, I cooked the chicken before putting it in the oven.  Yesterday I actually didn't cook the chicken ahead of time, and my husband actually said he loved the way it turned out yesterday compared to the first time I made it.  Note to self: when making Corny Chicken Bake again, don't cook chicken ahead of time.

Today for the first time in a very long, long time, both of my kids took a nap at the same time and my daughter ended up napping for two hours!  Two hours!  I think I might regret that later on tonight when bedtime comes around because my husband will be struggling to get her to bed at 7:30pm.  But I think today after dinner, I'll give my daughter a nice relaxing bath and use some lavender lotion on her to help relax her and help him get her to bed easier.  I hope it works.  Last night we both had a hard time getting her to fall asleep.  She has been pretty easy to get to sleep lately, up until last night when it took a bit longer than usual.  My son fell asleep early last night so that was easy for me, but hearing my husband and daughter in the other room while he was trying to get her to sleep was breaking my heart so I helped him out to get her asleep.

Haven't really crafted much

I haven't made a card in so long.  I thought about making one but the motivation is not there.  I have the stuff cut out to just adhere and put on a card, but I just haven't done that yet.  I have just been working on A's stuff though.  However, I haven't really done much other than cut the papers I need and soon I will need to cut out the 20 teacups and 20 teapots that will be going on the boxes.  But I will probably work on those this weekend.  

My husband is off next week!  Yay!  I love Spring Break.  I would love for a day to just sleep in as long as I want to and not worry about anything.  But that is just not going to happen.  Last year we went on vacation to visit my husband's family.  When we were there one day, he told me he was going to take a quick one hour nap.  So I said go ahead and I would watch the kids.  Well, his one hour nap lasted like for fifteen hours!  I wish I could sleep that long.

My son has been crawling all over the place lately.  He gets into everything and even when I have the gate up to block him from it, he somehow still manages to get in where he shouldn't be.  He's becoming quite sneaky.  He briefly stood up last night, nearly gave me a heart attack as I was not expecting to see that.  My daughter's been obsessed with my phone lately.  I downloaded a few games for her to play and now that's all she wants to do is play games on my phone.  But her attention span is so short that I end up changing the game for her every five minutes and she says no to each one and I'm running out of games for her to play because she is saying no to everything and then she runs away upset cause I can't get her a game she wants and I don't know which one she wants since she is saying no to everything.