Great kid's website!

Ty just loves playing games on the computer and it amazes me how quickly he catches on to each new game! I found this great new website to help kids learn how to read. It's www.starfall.com. It has so many things to do and if you click on a word it will spell it, sound it out and then say it! Check it out if you have preschoolers!

Bedtime battle

Life as a single mom can be very challenging at times and for me the biggest struggle has always been bedtime until now! Both my boys were very good about going to sleep on their own when they were still babies and sleeping in a crib. I would just go lay them down and leave the room until......i switched them over to their toddler bed! While i was pregnant with Dillon I started laying down in bed with Ty until he fell asleep. After i switched Dillon over to his toddler bed I would lay down on the couch with him until he fell asleep and then carry him to his bed. While i would be holding Dillon on the couch Ty would lay down on the other end of the couch or in the chair, floor, etc and once he fell asleep i would carry him to his bed too. Some nights they would both be asleep by 8:30 or 9:00.....other nights it could be 11:00 before they both would fall asleep! Everyone told me that if i started putting them in their beds to go to sleep it would only be a few nights of crying and fighting and then it would be over! I didn't believe that at all and the thought of even those few nights of an hour long of screaming was just plain exhausting. The problem with our routine was that i need a couple hours of peace and quiet or "Me time" before i would go to sleep and so some nights that would mean that i would stay up until 12:00 or 1:00 a.m. just because i was enjoying "me time"!

If anyone knows me at all then they know that i NEED 8 or 9 hours of sleep or i do not function! So about a month ago i was so exhausted from our old routine that i decided the time had finally come to make these boys go to bed in their room and in their own beds! One night after toys were put away, pj's were on and teeth were brushed i told the boys that we were going to do something new every night. I marched them to their beds, tucked them in, and explained what our new routine was going to be.....pj's on, brush teeth, read book and then bedtime. When i looked over at Ty and saw a look of confusion on his face i simply explained to him that all little boys and girls all over the world goes to sleep in their beds....not on the couch, or on the floor but their BED!

So I sat down and read them a story and then gave them more kisses and said "Good Night" on my way out of the room. Within seconds I could hear Dillon climbing frantically out his little tykes car bed and rushing to the door in tears. "Here we go" i thought to myself. So I calmly took his hand and led him back to his bed, tucked him in and said "good night". This went on for an hour. In between him leaving the room and me leading him back in amongst the crying I could hear Ty talking to him and saying "but Dillon, all little boys and girls go to sleep in their beds". I have to say that i was impressed with Ty. He has never fought me at bedtime and was very encouraging to Dillon!

Night two of the new routine Dillon only fought me for about a half an hour. Nights three and four were only about ten to fifteen minutes and ever since there have been no tears! YAY!!

There is still the occasional coming out a few minutes later with excuses like "i need to go potty" or "i wanna a drink" or even "i need to blow my nose" but the battle is over! Now i get to start my "me time" between 8:00 and 8:30 instead of just whenever they fall asleep and it has been great! Why didn't i try this sooner?

Apple picking!

Fall is absolutely my favorite time of the year! I just love the crisp cool, NOT COLD, air, the beautiful changing leaves, mums, pumpkins, football and APPLES!!!! We started a new tradition last year of going apple picking and the boys just love it!

We couldn't find any ladders so we had to improvise!

I'm not quite sure how many apples Dillon ate while we were picking!

Riding on the wagon back to the store.

The wagon driver stopped at the haymaze to let the boys run through it. Ty was very quick finding his way through and even helped Dillon!

Eating a cookie they picked out at the store. Dillon only ate a few bites but i think he was full from all the apples he ate!

So now I have a HUGE bag of Golden Delicious apples and I need some recipes! If anyone knows of any yummy recipes for apple dumplings, crisp, pie, etc. let me know so that i can try them!!!!

Weightview

At the beginning of this year I had great motivation to lose some weight. Unfortunately after I had lost 30 pounds I somehow lost my motivation and really need to get it back! If anyone has any suggestions please let me know!!!!

Sometime earlier this year I had come across this website, www.weightview.com and I strongly recommend it. It's very easy to use and they send you the results within just a few days. All you do is upload a photo and then choose how many pounds you would like to lose (up to 50 pounds). They send you a photo of what you could look like after you lost your chosen amount of weight. Here's my before and after...........

Before....

After 50 pounds lost!

First day tidbit

Today was my first day of training at JCP. It was 4 hours of listening.........but there was one little tidbit of information that i found interesting and wanted to share!

The man who founded JC Penney didn't want his store to be considered just another "dime store" so he refused to stock dimes in his cash registers. They still DO NOT stock dimes in the cash registers at JCP. The only dimes that you will ever find in the registers are the ones given by the customers. Lol......crazy traditions ;)

Great story ;)

I read this story over the weekend on www.themotherhood.com and wanted to share! Great ending ;)

JulieCole posted a story
Have Breasts, Will Travel

I have this friend Steve who was recently on a flight. Across the aisle was a new mama with her babe and a very elderly man, who from here on in shall be called ‘old dude’.
As the airplane was taking off, mama started breastfeeding babe. As any travelling mama knows, it’s good if you can get babe to feed on the way up and the way down to relieve any ear pain due to changing air pressure.

As she is feeding, old dude is shuffling around, mumbling under his breath, clearing his throat and basically looking uncomfortable with the breastfeeding situation that is going down beside him.

It was a short flight so before long decent had started and mama sensibly put babe back on breast. Old dude could not contain himself any longer and said “this is clearly making me uncomfortable and yet you continue to breastfeed that child.”

At that point, old dude should have been happy he was not sitting next to me. I feed anywhere, anytime and in front of anyone. If someone feels uncomfortable, they are welcome to leave. Indeed if that sentence had fallen on my ears I likely would have experienced something very close to rage.

Old dude had the good fortune of sitting beside a very gracious mama who very politely and respectfully explained why it helps baby to feed when there is change in air pressure. Old dude seemed satisfied and quite pleased that he had learned something new that day.

The plane landed and old dude was shuffling around looking for his cane and belongings when he turned and looked at my friend Steve and with a quiet smurk said:
“Huh, and to think for all these years I’ve been chewing gum”.

No blogging this weekend!

As most of you know I work from home doing medical transcription on the weekends. Normally I pick it up on Thursday evening and have to drop it back off by Sunday evening. This weekend i did not get to pick it up until Friday afternoon so i lost almost an entire day's worth of time and there is a lot to get done! So I will be typing, typing, typing........

Please keep Alberta, the lady that i contract through, in your thoughts and prayers as she just lost her husband this week. In this line of work you do not get much time off. Her husband passed away on Tuesday and the viewing was Thursday and the funeral on Friday and she still had to go to the offices to pick up the dictation on Thursday! She will have to be back to her normal routine by Monday so I can only imagine how hard this will be for her :(

I'll be back with another post hopefully Monday night! Have a great weekend everyone! :D

Fall decor

I did a couple of different things this year with our pumpkins and gourds and I'm excited with how they both turned out!

First with the pumpkins I tried something that I read in a magazine last year. It was super easy and not messy like it usually is when carving pumpkins! Using an apple corer u just puncture holes in two different color pumpkins and then put the little circle that u cut out of one color into the other!

We go to the same place every year to get pumpkins and Marisa had some of these made up and i thought they were so cute that i had to try it! It was a little bit harder and more time consuming than the pumpkin idea but i think it turned out great! You take daisy gourds and put them on a stick (i used bamboo skewers) and wrap the stick with floral tape. Then put some styrofoam in a pot and arrange the sticks in the pot. Then i used spanish moss to cover the styrofoam!

Pumpkin Patch

Every year around the beginning of October I take the boys to the pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins! Ty was talking about what his costume was each year and I pulled out all the old pictures and thought I would share them.....it's amazing how much they change from year to year!

Ty - 1st Halloween (8 months old)

Ty - 2nd halloween (20 months old)

Ty - 3rd halloween (2 1/2 years old)

Ty- 4th halloween (3 1/2 years old)

Ty - 5th halloween (4 1/2 years old)

Dillon - 1st halloween (8 months old)

Dillon - 2nd halloween (20 months old)

Dillon - 3rd halloween (2 1/2 years old)

This year Ty picked out a Wolverine costume and Dillon picked out Spiderman! We just didn't have the costumes with us when we stopped at the pumpkin patch. Now I need to get my creative juices flowing to figure out what to do with all the pumpkins and gourds that we got!

Our family

I didn't want my first post to be completely random so I thought I would give sort of an introduction about my family! We live in a VERY small town in Indiana. Somehow we manage to stay busy 5 or 6 days out of the week so i'm sure i'll find tons to blog about ;)

At the current time my 4 year old is all about drawing and writing and anything artistic so i will probably be posting some pics of his artwork soon! He literally will sit and draw for hours......so you can imagine how much paper i go through! Lol....today in the car he was asking me how to spell a bunch of words and when i asked him what he was doing he told me he was making out his Christmas list.....lol, oh boy!

My 2 year old on the other hand is my sports nut! He asks everyday if we are going to a football game or the race track. Even today while we were in the waiting room at the dentist office he was putting a pretend football on the floor and then running to kick it! lol.....the other patients probably thought he was crazy.

And i guess that leaves me.....well i'm the mom of the two very active boys mentioned above! I work part time from home doing medical transcription and i just got hired on at JCP part time starting next week (just in time to buy the things on my son's christmas list ;) )! I'm looking into going back to school next fall for nursing....wish me luck!

Well that's a start.......stay tuned ;)