Whirlwind

What a month(s).....yup I feel like for the first time in a while I have come up for air to breathe, I know it will only be a short time until it gets crazy busy once again.

I called my mom and for my birthday I told her I want 1 of 2 things.  1) a neat desk scanner to help get rid of the bill/paper clutter or 2) a professional organizer to come help organize and get rid.....her response was......"Blah ha ha ha that was funny so what can I get you that I can afford?"....I told her "a gift card to Subway" she just laughed

What have I been doing.....I am not so sure...maybe some pictures will help with that!

To start we moved!  In the middle of moving and unpacking we have been trying to stay caught up with life....

Jeff is close to graduating.  This was the weekend we moved!  His mom bought a graduation/fathers day cake and he was practicing for graduation with the cake decoration! The weekend after we moved in we went on a short family vacation!!!

Payeton was trying to catch up on her beauty sleep in the car!

Jasmin refused to give in!

Best Friends!!!

Our family likes to be silly.....That sure do hate snuggle time!

In my family 4 generations does not happen (meaning my sibblings, parents, grandparents).  So when we went to Jeff's family reunion I finally won and got a 4 generation picture.  This is the girls Jeff, Jeff's mom Sue, and Sue's Dad, Don Meldrum (A.K.A Grandpa Meldrum).  He turned 90 this year and he is AMAZING.  He is a giant.  He stands (well used to stand) at about 6'9.  No wonder my girls are so tall.

The girls absolutely love to swing.  When we go to the park all they want to do is swing!

Jeff Graduated.  Bragging Rights - he is the only one in his program that graduated with honors and his program was had about 20-25 people in it.  He worked his butt of for 2.5 years and it shows he now has a killer job and loves it.

I am proud of him and all of his hard work

This is our new place when we first moved in.  The girls were trying very hard to help us unpack.....we are still trying to unpack!

Jasmin turned 5 and we had a small party for her!

Girls just want to have fun!

Jeff was a rock star and took the girls for the weekend a few weekends ago to the beach to see grandma and grandpa.  So I busted a move tried to clean unpack and organize.This is part of our room before!

And after

Here is our office after hours of work.  We are far from done, but it is getting there.  

Our June and start of July were hectic, I am not sure if things have actually calmed down or not or maybe it is just because I have gotten used to the pace of life now.  We have come to the conclusion that we be unpacked and moved in the week before it is time to move again. Our goal is to be in our apartment for only 1 year. 

As the girls get older we are starting to have more fun, and they are getting sillier by the day.  

I am just amazed how much we have accumulated and how much we have gotten rid of. 

How DO you organize?

Since we moved I have been on a real kick to downsize, organize, sort, throw away, donate.......I realized when we moved we have a lot of stuff.  I mean A TON of stuff.......It is disgusting. We have everything from extra unworn clothes, toys, piles of paper, listened to CD's, movies we have not watched in a few years, books both read and unread, plethora of dishes, not to mention all the stuff my mom is storing at her house, to the point that we have kind of forgotten what we have and don't have.

So since we have moved I have thrown away a lot of "stuff" that Goodwill will throw away themselves.  I have also given quite a few boxes to local donation sites and it feels good.  I think to myself "WOW I am awesome I am making so much progress" until I turn around or open another closet or box....I think someone is adding miracle grow to our stuff while we sleep.

Even though this is just a snippet of our stuff it helps to give a picture of what I mean.

There are some things that Jeff is hesitant to let go of as am I, however, it is time to start making a simplified life.I read a quote somewhere that says "The less you have the less you have to clean"  AMEN!!!! So that is my goal I would love to see us be able to have all of our stuff under one roof, which means letting go.

So I have a few questions and please leave your thoughts.

How do you organize your home?
How do you "let go" of items that are taking up space, but the mere fact of looking at it brings back a flood of emotions?
What do you do with all of you CD's that you have not listened to or that you have ripped and put on your computer?
What organizing tips do you have that are simple (I do work part time so I am not at home all day) that are not time consuming and that young children can help you with?

Please help any ideas are welcome.  I want a realistically organized house not a house where guests feel uncomfortable to be in.

Thank you for your input.

Sleeping.......

It seems as though life has been crazy. It is not that I have been ignoring my blog....or not that I do not have plenty to blog about....but by the time I get this point in my day I am either exhausted, have 4 billion other things needing my attention, my brain hurts from the day......ok I think you get the idea.

So what have I been doing you ask....Good question I HAVE NO IDEA......

Well I should not say that.  We have been doing a lot.  Jeff is almost done with school and for about 2 months ish or so he had been applying EVERYWHERE for a job......I mean EVERYWHERE...He finally found something after many hours of applying and many many prayers and some fasting he found an awesome job up in Tigard.  For the past 3 weeks between school and work and he has been putting in anywhere between 12 and 14 hour days, he is in school 6 days a week.  So come Sunday after church we usually take a family nap.

Which usually look like this.  Jeff and me sleep and the girls play the toys (the iPad and iPod) They only get them on them on the weekends and they are usually very limited to like 1 or maybe 2 hours all weekend.  If they are not playing the toys they are watching cartoons.  However, 2 weeks ago we all slept and it was MARVELOUS!!!

Jasmin had a sleep study done because she sleep walks, snores, and talks A LOT during her sleep.  Her sleep walking was bad she had actually walked out of the house once, and freaked Jeff out (I was not home at the time).  Another time she peed in the middle of her bedroom.  She has not had any accidents in well over a year, but usually it is just her walking from one room to another and she will lay down and "go back to sleep".  She snores terribly as well.  Like and old man snore....almost.  I finally bugged the doctors at Doernbechers and they got her into a sleep study.  After the consultation the Dr said he is 98% positive she has sleep apnea......which I am not at all surprised considering Grandpa Jay, Uncle Justin (Jeff's Justin), Jeff and, Uncle Theron all have sleep apnea.  The doctor told me that sleep apnea in children can cause sleep walking and snoring, like I have described and in most cases it is solved by removing tonsils and adenoids.

The machine that all the wires go into

All these wires will end up on Jasmin

Oh and these wires too

Here she is having her head measured so the
could tell where to place all the wires

Marking and preparing for the wires to stick to her head

This was they could measure her oxygen levels while she sleep

Almost done only a few more.  She had wires
on her legs, chest, back, face, behind her ears, all over
her head and one on her throat for her vocal cords

Finishing touches.....

No she is not ready to go skiing....this is help keep
 all the wires attached to her to measure her brain activity

The "oxygen tube" is to measure
her breathing and the temperature of her breath.

We have not yet gotten the results back we should have them back in the next week or so.  We will know if Jasmin will need another surgery or not.  Because of her cleft palate reconstruction I was told by the sleep doctor that it is not the normal procedure for removing tonsils and adenoids they can only take part of them because of how they have already had to manipulate the tissue and the muscles to close the cleft, but we will know more once the results are in.

We have also been looking for a place to live.  Which has not come easy.  Everything that we called on was either way to expensive or they just rented it out.  We wanted to stay out of the apartments, but we were getting desperate.  So we finally gave in and applied for a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment and we were approved.. YEAH YEAH one stress is gone, now to pack and move......Maybe this move will allow us to have ALL of our stuff under ONE roof for the first time in 3.5 years.  My mom has been awesome and has allowed to store a lot of stuff at her house.  I am not sure what we have and don't have anymore.  Our main focus is to move and clean our current location.  But that will be hard to as just after we move most of our stuff we are heading to Jeff's grandpa's 90th birthday celebration.  When we get home from that Jeff walks in graduation......than it will be time to unpack and put together our apartment.  July will be heaven....I hope....well maybe not because then starts birthday season for us.  Jasmin in July Payeton and me both have ours in August.  Our 7th wedding anniversary in in August then Jasmin starts kindergarten in September....WAIT WHAT....I just brought her home from the hospital...

WOW!!!

I am shocked, maybe I should not be but I am.  When someone makes a comment/opinion about an article, the backlash there is.  I am not going into specifics just venting about how unforgiving our society/world has become.  Since when can we not agree to disagree, or why are we so quick to point out others short comings when we have plenty of our own?

It reminds me of the scripture in Matthew 7:3-4.  Well ok really that entire chapter.  I am guilty of it, but than I am gently reminded that we do not know everyone's background and we should be accepting.  If we have unkind thoughts or if we want to make ourselves better.  We need to stop, think, and be understanding of the person and not judge according to what we hear.

Even though I am guilty of it.  This is something that I have been trying very hard to work on lately.  I do battle with depression and it is easy for me to see all the negatives in people, all their problems, all their short comings.  I have been trying very very hard to stop my thoughts and view them form the Lords eyes, to try and love them, to find positive things in people even if it is something as simple as, they have on a nice shirt today.  Somedays are easier than others, but again as it is a weakness that I am working on for myself.  I can see a change in the way I view people.

Anyways back to today.  I made a post on an article and I was surprised at how quickly people were to tell me how wrong I was with my point of view, with how I am a bad person, how I should not respect a certain group of people.  Yes I know you are dying to know what this is all about.  All I have to say is it does not matter.  But, my respect for Joseph Smith grew ten fold today.  It is hard to stand up for what you believe, to receive persecution daily and to not give up.  I respect him for not hiding, giving up or questioning his faith.  Today I caught a glimpse of what he went through on a daily basis, and after a few negative comments made to me I was down in the dumps, and decided I will not make a comment on a news article again.  He was truly a courageous, strong man that in the depths of his trials, and persecution he continued to push on.

Ok off my soap box and I feel better about venting.  I am just disgusted at how cruel, mean, terrible, awful, unforgiving our world has become.  I just hope and pray that I am not part of that and that I can bring forgiveness, light, happiness to those around me and build them up and not tear them down.

No I am going to sew and work on a service project for church, to help those that are in greater need than I am.

Photo Update

Ok so it has been a while since I have updated my pictures on my blog so here is a good ol' photo dump everything form Melissa visiting us to cooking dinner General Conference weekend for some friends.  I hope you enjoy the fun!

Jeff's little sister, Melissa, was in town for a few days and she stayed at our house.  The girls had a blast putting tattoos on her and coloring them.  They love it when she comes and visits the give her a lot of cuddles and snuggles.  I need to find the one of the pictures with all of them chillin' with wet nails.

Payeton Loves her Aunt Mina 

I am part of a quilt club we meet once a month for about an hour and there is theme to the club.  In other words it a time for mostly the women (there is one young man) to get together and laugh and have fun and relax.  Anyways here is a couple of the finished blocks. 

    

Now on the Easter.  This past year I have been very bah-hum-bug ish when it comes to holidays.  I am depressed about how commercialized spiritual holidays have come and how media has made us think we need to be happy.  If it was not for the girls I probably would have skipped over Christmas and Easter and everything in between.  But we did not.  I think once we are more settled and in a more permanent place it will be better. 

Back to Easter.  I was on line looking at different ways to dye eggs instead of doing the different cups and dyes.  I liked this one a lot.  You take a paper towel and drop food coloring all over it and then use a squirt bottle and spray the paper towel with vinegar water and roll the egg up in the paper towel and put it in a bag.  The longer it is wrapped up the brighter the eggs come out looking tie dyed.  It was a lot of fun, minimal mess, and super easy.  I let mine sit over night in the fridge.  I wish I took after pictures because it turned out AWESOME!!!

                                        

                                               We are all done dyeing eggs......or our hands.......
                                        whatever we had fun

Easter Morning the girls came out to find the Easter Bunny had left them some presents.   Jasmin had some die on her face from her hands from sleeping I wish I had gotten a picture of it because I scrubbed and scrubbed and could not get it off so she went to church with some dye on her face!     

                             

 

The Easter bunny went Grandma's house to hide the eggs.  The girls had a blast.  After they found all their eggs they hid them for each other.  It was great!  They now have Hello Kitty hats.  I have some fashionistas on my hands!

They are discussing where more eggs could be.

I have been working hard on letting the girls help me clean the house.  The new founded joy is they love to help me vacuum.  They run away from it unless they are pushing it.

About every 3 months or so Jeff makes a big batch of spaghetti sauce and I can it.  It is a staple in our house and homemade sauce taste sooooooo much better than store bought and it is a lot cheaper too.  Anyways, here is Jeff making spaghetti sauce, and fajitas, and a brown sauce for dinner the next night.  We invited some friends over because they have been helping Jeff and I and we owed them a thank you for their awesomeness and help.

He has on my moms apron that I borrowed to make a pattern

This is our dinner

This is the brown sauce for steaks simmering and reducing

Here is our spaghetti sauce cooking away

Yup this is what the stove top looked like

If you know me I do not belong in the kitchen.
 I asked Jeff what I could do to help and he
 said stand their and look pretty........no open
the different cans of tomatoes to use.

I also got all the fresh herbs ready for him to cut.
He will not let me touch sharp objects either.

The girls have rediscovered the WII.  We stopped playing for a while only because they were too young and would get frustrated easily. Here they are playing a WII ski game and they love it.

Another pot holder/hot pad.  A friend of mine her mother-in-law
 is awesome and gave me some tips on how to do the binding...Finally it looks good.  I still need a lot of practice. 

So this has been our past few weeks.  We have had fun.  We do not have any great stories to tell other than we have managed to squeeze some fun into our busy lives!