I realized that Tom really doesn't get a lot of mention on the blog. He is of middle child syndrome. He just likes to watch and observe and then suddenly surprise us with all that he has learned. But he doesn't like a lot of foods at meal time. Since he first began eating solid foods he has rejected nearly every fruit or vegetable and mostly everything else unless it is BREAD. As a survival instinct he has learned to eat unnatural portions at breakfast because it is heavily laden with carbs. As a two year old he would consume 3 adult size bowls of frosted flakes or frosted mini-wheats. When dinner rolls around he seems to only have room for the bread. We have made a lot of strides over the last year and a half. He now loves beans especially green beans, he eats pickles and pickled asparagus, and applesauce and my homemade strawberry freezer jam. Not sure why it must be a processed fruit/vegetable item to be able to make the cut. Lately I have been on a Tofu kick. We ...

In the last two months I have had three birthday parties. I am so glad that they are done. Jacobs was the most recent and we threw him a Pokemon party of cours e. I planned lots of little games then tied it into a pokemon character. Then they put them in their Pokeball in a little folder that I made. It was probably the most fun birthday party where I spent the least. The biggest expense was probably all the ink I used on my printer to print off the pokemon. This year I put all my energy into the party and so the cake wasn't very exciting. I love to give my kids birthday parties and sometimes that just means cake and ice cream, other times it includes games and a meal too. I do not feel any pressure to perform to a standard of birthday party excellence- No jump houses, party hall destinations, and extensive party favors(does a piece of leftover cake count?) After growing up surrounded by extended family, I just don't feel it is a birthday with just my family sitting arou...

So this last month I have been working on a huge project. Dave and I took a risk and bought a whole storage unit(like a 30 ft one) of stuff. It included a lot of furniture, same place where we got our couches, beds, dressers, armoires, table&chairs, and various other large pieces. But then there were 40 surprise boxes that contained so me china we were told but otherwise we really didn't know. We figured that we were getting our value the furniture so what ever we got of value in the boxes would just be icing on the cake. I am both cheap as mentioned before and minimalistic. I don't want to spend money on decorative items that could only be broken or if I looked at clearance section there was a reason why it was there. I could probably count on one hand the decorative pieces that I have in my house, especially if you exclude living plants because that is Daves thing. If it doesn't serve a purpose like providing light or holding pictures I am not going to buy it....