So grateful.

Two of my friends came to my house today...to clean! They organized toys, swept, mopped, did dishes, moved furniture, gave me storage bins for my fabric and sewing notions, and fed me to top it off! I am so grateful for friends with their own families and busy lives who take the time to come help me do my housework. It is indeed a blessing to have found such a wonderful circle of women. It also makes the task so much more do-able when done with friends.

Congratulations...

... to my friend H on the happy home water birth of her 3rd baby...
a 10lb 13oz, 22.5 inch boy.

She's my new birthing inspiration...

...and welcome earthside, Baby BDC!

The Story of Stuff

If you haven't yet watched the Story of Stuff, please do. Then take the message to heart ;)


Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...

What's your accent?

Found this on another blog. My result was right...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Appliance Excitement

Before:

After:

Who knew that a bright, shiny new appliance could make my heart soar? Sigh.
Our old fridge was unevenly cooling things - the back of the cheese drawer was freezing. The door clunked every time it was opened, and we were just waiting for it to fall off. So...the paper had an ad for the Sears Appliance Outlet and voila! You see our shiny new, energy-efficient, top-fridge, bottom-freezer-drawer, stainless steel refrigerator.

Muddy boy and not much else

Baby L simply loves going out on our back patio...and beyond, to the mud pit. Wednesday, a friend and her kiddos came up to our part of town for some Dino fun followed by play at our house. The kids were all playing in the mud/water, so of course Mr. L was too! Big sis C took these pics:


In other news, today is a half-day for C, and the beginning of Spring Break. We have no major plans for the week. I will be attending two Blessingways this weekend and garage sale-ing. The girls and Daddy will be going to an Easter egg hunt at the Ranch.

Enjoy your weekend!

Mystery Meal

I tried to assemble a yummy meal ahead of time by using our slow cooker. I did what the recipe told me...but eeewww:


Needless to say, it was not eaten! Now the real question is, who can tell what that was supposed to be?



I'll give a hint...




...think breakfast...



And the answer is: OATMEAL! With raisins...

So who knows a fail-proof oatmeal in a slow-cooker recipe? I mean, how hard can it be??

Arboretum Adventures

For our family hike this weekend, we chose a trip to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum. It was another perfect day, and a lovely spot for some low-key adventures. We got a pretty late start, so our "hiking" was minimal...but we'll go back soon to explore the trails a little more.

Time keeps ticking...

...and for us, it does so without "springing ahead." So if you were thinking of calling us, be sure to note we are currently on Pacific Time! That's right, Arizona and Hawaii (and until April 2006, parts of Indiana!) do not participate in that bi-yearly clock-turning ritual. And, just to make it more confusing - actually, the Navajo Nation in NE Arizona, DOES participate in DST!

OK, to be precise, we're not really on Pacific Time. We're on Mountain Standard Time (MST), not to be confused with Mountain Daylight Time (MDT).

Clear as mud, huh?

Here are some more fun DST tidbits for you...like the story of the twins born at the clock change, so though Twin B came 34 minutes after her brother, Twin A, her official time of birth is 20 minutes EARLIER.

Sweet sisters

Every night now, C reads books to E. Usually she is in her upper "bunk" while E is in her lower berth...but we just bought this new reading light for E at IKEA. Since it was a cool new gadget, C was reading right in bed with E. Once it got quiet, this was the scene we found:

Hiking

Saturday, Piestewa Peak (Phoenix visible in the distance)




Sunday, Papago Park

(the "dino cave")

(pit stop)



(Bass boys - city below)


(Whew - hard work, all that hiking)


(While I'm showing off cute sleeping baby...who doesn't ever actually sleep when WE want to)


We decided with all the rains we've had, we'd explore the gorgeous green desert. We're just a little early for wildflowers - hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have some impressive pics to share of the desert in bloom.

We went to REI after hiking on Saturday and bought the girls their very own water hydration packs (C picked blue, E picked pink)...which they proudly wore all day Sunday! C went through her entire 1L bag...ah, novelty! But the real bonus is, *I* no longer have to carry *their* water, and *they* can drink whenever they want! Win-win...

Our poor kids.

From the USA Weekend thing in our Sunday paper:

According to researchers at UW, 40% of three-month-old babies are regular TV watchers...and 90% of two-year-olds are!!

Our kids will just never fit in with their peers. They'll be years and years behind when it comes to pop culture.

Thank goodness!

Poor things almost NEVER see TV. They might average an hour of any screen time per month. Maybe. More like an hour per two months. And more often than not, that's an episode of Little Bear on DVD.

Of course, since we only get fuzzy broadcast TV, it's not hard to not watch the tube in our house :)