Traffic pro

So James called as he got off the interstate to tell us to get the dogs outside in the kennel before he got home. When he got here he asked everyone to come out and help him carry things inside. The girls were all excited and grabbed their Mc Donalds bags. Then James grabbed a little cardboard happy meal looking box and asked Neona to carry it inside.

Everyone stopped and looked at it to find out why it looked so different. The kids started to notice the picture on the side of the box. After a long and very quiet minute Nicole says, "This had better be a real Guinea Pig because this is not a funny joke!" The girls were so excited to get Mc Donalds and a Guinea Pig all in one day. LOL

James found out that a friends of ours had a friend that was selling baby Chinchillas. He asked if we wanted one. After we looked up more information about Chinchillas I told him that I think the kids would like a Guinea Pig better. Chinchillas are too destructive, do not really like to be handled, and have a lot of health problems and vet bills. I really did not think he would race out and get one this week! I was as surprised as the kids.

Normally I am against adding any more animals to the house but it is soooo cute. We put his cage in the rec room since that is the only place that we usually keep the door shut and other animals out. Plus there is almost always someone in there. The rec room has the computer that I do the website from so I am in their when everyone else is gone.

It is a male and is 2 months old. His body is all white and his face is white and orangish brown. His fur has a cute messy swirls look. If you just look at his face he looks like Rodney the guinea pig on Dr Doolittle. The girls actually called him Rodney until they looked at a website of guinea pig names. Now they have named him Bacon Bit. Get it guinea PIG. Sorry I thought it was cute.

James asked if I would be against him getting another male so he is not lonely. I would have told him to get two if I knew he was going but I understand why he waited and asked me. I tend to not be very happy when we get more animals. We are starting to become a zoo. Well he plans on getting a second on his way home from work one of these days. Most likely tomorrow because Monday he will be in Janesville for the first time and won't know where anything is.

So that will bring us to... 2 huge dogs, 2 cats, 2 guinea pigs, and fish.
Plus the rabbits and cats that think they live in our yard.

For once in my life I am actually not being sarcastic while saying that!

We live so far away from anything that we have not had fast food since....let me think...still thinking....okay, I guess the last time was back when we got the kids snow pants right after moving here. That would have been almost 3 months ago.

We have not even had any form of restaurant food since then. That night it was not even enjoyable. It was late on a weeknight and we had to hurry up and eat at the food court in a mall in Madison since we had no dinner at home. The whole time James kept rushing us because we still had to drive home.

James gets fast food at least 3 times a week because of work. He gets fast food so often that it is no big deal to him and he does not realise that the kids miss it. He hates fast food as do I normally. For some reason though it sounds good today. It is so weird to live so far away from any fast food.

The other day I was in the middle of telling the girls that James was bringing them home a new fish for their tank. I had just gotten out, "Guess what dad is bring home today?" and Nicole shouts out, "Is it Mc Donalds? Please tell me it is Mc Donalds!" so James figured he better bring some home today. Who knows how hot it will be by the time he gets home though. LOL

I do not know if anyone has seen Google Maps new "Street View".

It is pictures like Aerial View except it was an actual car mounted camera that drove down the streets. They have been slowly adding more cities. I check once in awhile to see if cities I have lived in are added yet. Last time I checked they had 3 of the cities I have lived in but not here.

I had to get a map this morning for a party Noelle is going to tomorrow. To my surprise they have added street view to my town and Madison. I wasted way too much time playing with it. LOL

Maybe I am weird but I have a blast looking at places I know. Sometimes you find people standing outside that you recognise. Today I was looking at our house and seeing what it will look like when the trees have leaves. I can not wait. The trees that border the yard look so thick with leaves that it looks like the yard will be very secluded.

It looks like Google now has around 40 cities added now. If you go to the Google Maps home page that has the full map of the whole U.S. you will find at the top right hand of the map a button that says Street View. When you click it cameras pop up at the cities that are already added. It is a lot of fun.

For cities that have street view you only have to look up an address and a box will pop up giving you the option to look at the street view. Then you can also choose full screen.

Yesterday the girls wanted to try a new experiment so we microwaved Ivory soap so I added it to the website.

The kids really thought it was cool. Heck, I did too. LOL

At any rate I really need to get going on some laundry and I should probably feed these kids some lunch. LOL

Spring break is going by way too fast. I planned on getting so much done and it seems like everyday ends with me feeling like I did not get everything done that I wanted. I can not believe it is already Wednesday.

Monday I needed to go to the village hall to pay the water and sewer bill. Plus the dogs needed to be licensed by April 1st. Noelle insisted that we should walk there since it was a sunny day. It seems a lot farther when you walk. I found that I really need to work out more again. LOL

Tuesday we did a lot of chores around the house. My girls always request that I make a chore list for them. They like going through the list and feeling like they are choosing to do items instead of being told they have to do them. They can also do it in any order they want so they feel less like it is a forced thing.

They liked Nicole's idea of doing chores for points so we added that in to try it out. I made a list of all things I would like to have done and then gave each chore a point value. Then I made a shopping list of snacks, treats, and free time things that they could buy with their points.
They really liked doing it that way.

In fact Nicole who is little miss sensible still has 100 points that she was not able to spend yesterday. She raced to do more chores so that she could get as many points as possible. The girls are now saying that they want me to do this from now on instead of the weekly chore list I have been doing. Nicole added that she feels we should be doing it for money instead of points. LOL

Last night I made turkey pot pie in a casserole pan to use up the dark meat from Easter. No one in this house will eat it otherwise. I was going to cheat and just use biscuit dough or cornbread on top instead of making pie crust for the bottom and top, but James called home and begged me to make pie crust.

I think today I will make au gratin potatoes with ham to use up the rest of the ham from Easter.

While I have been typing this the girls have been watching How Clean Is Your House and You Are What You Eat on BBC America so I am feeling guilty about doing nothing. Time to get to work. LOL

James wanted to go out last night and get his mind off of work. So we went out with Josh and his wife and a couple they are friends with. It was pretty fun but we should not have stayed out so late. Waking up early this morning to hide eggs was very hard to do. We had two eggs that we could not find anywhere and I was too tired to remember where they could be.

So as my turkey started cooking I found red liquid coming from the back burner. I picked up my tea pot to find a lost egg behind it. So now we are down to just one egg lost. I wonder if a dog got it though. When we first started hiding them Padfoot was very interested so we put the dogs in the cage until we got done. Maybe he got one before we noticed.

I made turkey and ham. I have never made sweet potatoes before. I do not think I have ever even tried them before. They just never sounded good to me. Well, Betty Crocker just came out with instant sweet potatoes so James bought it to try out. It was actually not bad so I think I might try making the real thing some time. I still do not know if I will like the real thing though because the Betty Crocker ones had regular potatoes in it too.

We ate a ton. I am so stuffed. I cleaned up and put away leftovers and then started a pot to make broth from the turkey bones. I use broth very often and I love when I can make it myself instead of having to buy it.

I made an apple crisp and it is in the oven so I decided to sit for awhile. This day seems like it flew by. I can not believe that this day is already almost over. Okay the apple crisp is ready so I better go get the butter pecan ice cream and stuff myself with food again. LOL

Well today being St. Patrick's Day I have to make something Irish. I did not feel like making corned beef and cabbage so I am making Guinness Irish Stew. I have made it before and really like it with the Guinness beer in it but this time James wants me to actually follow the recipe and add the Marmite to it.

We have not had Marmite in the house for around 2 years so he had to go buy some. Which means we will still have a bunch left and I will probably have to start adding it to my Shepperd's Pie and Meat Pasties too. I hope it turns out okay. I never eat Marmite I always left it for him. I did like Twiglets which have Marmite flavoring so I will be hopeful. Okay time to start my stew.

I think I will make some Irish Soda Bread too. My family really likes that.

When my girls were all old enough to be in school full time I had to face the reality that my life was going to change completely. I no longer had anything to do during the day and I was bored.

We moved around a lot at the time because of James' work so I changed jobs a lot.I just wanted something to do when the kids were in school. I tried a few part time jobs to keep busy but nothing seemed right. I found myself wishing that I homeschooled because what I actually wanted was to hold on to my kids as long as possible.

Finally the idea for the website came along. My oldest daughter mentioned that I had a little free family website years ago that I enjoyed working on. The world has changed a lot in the years since I had the old site so I did not want to have a site full of family pictures any longer.

We started talking about what we could put on a website if we had one. Never really thinking we would do it.Then the more me talked the more we got excited about it. We decided that if we were going to do it we were going to do it all the way.

The website has become my "new baby". Some women start to want another baby as their kids get older and they are faced with redefining themselves. This has filled that void for me. It has been a long time since I have been able to really get excited about something not for the kids but for me.

So many times as mothers we put other people's needs before our own. We get so busy and tired that we forget all about ourselves. I really encourage all women to take some time alone to really find something of their own to get excited about. As mothers we need to be happy and take care of ourselves to raise happy children that know how to take care of themselves.

Noelle had a great time at her concert Monday night. I loved not having to bring in a big cello for once. The clarinet is much easier to keep safe too. I really do not like how late they have the concerts here though. I do not fully remember what time concerts started in Arizona but I know they were early enough that we would go out for ice cream afterwards. Noelle had to be at the school by 6:45pm but the concert did not start until 7:30. By the time it was over and we got home it was 10pm. At that point the kids wanted more food of course. Next Monday she has a choir concert. It starts at 7pm so I hope it ends earlier but with all they are doing it sounds like it won't.

Yesterday afternoon we got a lot of chores done and the girls have been bugging me for awhile to make some paints so we made a batch of bath tub paints and Nicole and Neona played in the bath tub. I have mixed feelings on an 8 & 9 year old taking a bath together but bath tub painting is no fun to do alone. I guess if they are not uncomfortable taking baths together I should not think it is bad. I had stopped letting them take baths together mainly because of the mess they would make playing around together. They are really good about cleaning up the stuff they paint and it keeps them from splashing around and flooding the bathroom so I only let them take baths together when they paint.