Oh HI & Some Other Stuff

Yes. I have been totally MIA around here. Sorry.

I've been CLEANING. Seriously, cleaning. Organizing. Finishing projects. Cleaning. Cleaning. Cleaning. I am on a roll.... I have been almost totally off the computer. It's so weird. The medicine I am on... is totally making me do all this. It's gotta be because I have gotten more done in the last two weeks than I have gotten done in the last year or two ~ for real!!! 

It's actually been really nice.

I'm not putting up Project365 this week. Mainly because we are leaving town tomorrow morning and I really don't have time to do it this week. Sorry. I REALLY hope I can have it all back up and running next Friday. Sorry again. 

So we're going to visit my parents this weekend for a short trip. My little brother is graduating from eighth grade (!!!!!!!!) and so we must go. I get to see my bestest friend in the entire world on Saturday night so I am sooooooooooooooooooo super excited to see her. This girl is my other half, my true other half. I can't wait!!

In other REALLY AWESOME and EXCITING NEWS ~ TODAAAAAAY was our fourth wedding anniversary! Well, June 2nd was. Technically it is 1:34am and June 3rd, whatever. So we have been married four years and have three kids. And I think that's wild. Not at all what I expected of my life. We have not had an easy marriage, there have been MANY rough times most especially recently when it was hard to be in the same room and not argue. We both agreed to suck it up, both stop acting like jerks and really TRY. And so we have. And so things are going well. As they should do when we try to share and get along. It's not easy being married and anyone who tells you so is lying. Sometimes, being married sucks. Like getting used to living with a BOY {ew}, a CLEAN boy {weird}. I expected it to be easier because it had been so hard living apart... but it's really been an adjustment. Anyways, it's great to get through the rough patches and know that the other person was right there the whole time. Just waiting it out with you. I am so very lucky to have someone like my husband to be married to ~ he really is great sometimes! {Cause c'mon, you KNOW he's going to do something soon enough that will make my head spin! Haha!} 


Four years!! WILD. :)

Okay. I have to stop procrastinating and switch over the laundry. And then I should probably head to bed so I get SOME sleep tonight. 

Thanks for understanding about the recent failings of Project365 and the rest of my blogging. Hope you all are well. :) 

Blogging: FAIL.

So I haven't been blogging all week. I don't know... I just haven't felt it. And I suppose as a result of that, I completely forgot about Project365!! It was supposed to post today. I'm the worst. blogger. ever!!! Tomorrow it will hopefully be nice out and Hubby will have the girls in the yard doing yardwork so I will have time to post and set up the linky. My bad. Blogging, Fail.

A big apology to those who linked up last week and didn't get comments from me!! Thank you for linking up!! :)

We survived the recent Midwest storms just fine but those folks in Joplin, Missouri really got hit hard. There are TONS of ways you can help. Give blood, send $5 to the Red Cross... you get the idea. A blog I follow, Motherhood Unadorned, mentioned an auction going on at her friend's shop, LillyBelle's Closet. You can check it out by clicking here. Even a prayer, good thoughts, best wishes sent to Joplin would help out.

The destruction is really horrible.

OK. We have been super busy this week. 

The girls are out of school now so I'm trying to keep them as busy as possible. We spend a lot of time in our yard while the baby is napping. I putter around the patio trimming the flowers and plants, sometimes watering them ~ but it's rained a lot this week so not too much! :) The girls and I went on errands; somewhat superfluous, but it was nice to get out of the house. Snowdrop picked up something peanut while we were out; I think it was from the cart she was sitting in. I have one of those covers but she sometimes gets under it, etc. She's such a monkey; she has also discovered how to wriggle out of the strap. Monkey. Anyways, so she didn't have a crazy reaction but she was definitely a little puffy and rashy. It was scary. We gave her Wal-dryl (Benedryl) and she started looking better. It's really scary to think how easy it would be for her to come in contact with stuff. I had the Epi-Pen with us but still. 

I conquered my baby clothes catastrophe today and I'm proud to say that (...other than about 3-4 loads of baby laundry waiting to be done ~ a few items of which might need to be packed away...) I successfully organized, separated, and packed away 135 gallons (that's 5 plastic containers) worth of too-big/too-small clothes. As in, it's packed away in bins, IN a closet. UNSEEN if the doors are closed. Whoohoo!!! It feels REALLY awesome to have finally gotten all of that put away. The hallway floors can be seen and when Snowdrop went up to her room tonight, she stuck her arms out and said "Wheh?" 

I am so excited to be cleaning up.

This must be the medicine, right?

Which by the way... I think is going okay. Good-okay. Sometimes I feel like I could use a little more... kick to it? I'm still getting panicky sometimes. Still waiting it out to see how my body is adjusting... I guess sometimes I just feel like I need a little more "calm" than it's giving me. We'll see what happens.

Thanks for sticking around while I go through this.

I bought a pair of striped curtains from Goodwill this week. It appears that whoever previously owned them, decided to wash them instead of getting them dry-cleaned. The dark blue dye ran onto the light blue and tan stripes... there are a good amount of spots that need cleaning. Does anyone have any ideas? I read something about vinegar, but that was confusing. I'm not sure about bleach, what if I ruin them completely. They cost $16 total, which isn't a fortune but I don't want to ruin them further. I really like them but if I can't save them (relatively inexpensively, time and monetarily) then I don't think they are worth the $16.

Any stain/dye removal tips??

I also found two pairs (!!!) of white curtains with silver grommets. I've been looking for this style for quite some time now. I'm thrilled as each pair only cost $6. I can use these as curtains or under curtains as liner-curtains... there are so many uses. I'm so glad. AND since I found these, that means we'll be painting this main room GREY. I really love the combination of white panel curtains with grey walls. It's so crisp. And I think it will look great in our main room. Soooooooooo. The paint store sells "ooops" paint and I'm going to start checking for 5 gallon buckets of grey paint so we can get this room painted and done!! 

One more bit of news, Hubby convinced me to attend a wedding with him in June... across the country in Portland!!! It will be good for us to go away together. While I AM looking forward to going back to Portland for a visit & seeing old friends & getting away for a few days.... I'm totally NOT looking forward to flying ~ I really HATE flying. It makes me really anxious, nervous, worried, etc. I'm a fraidy cat. Never used to be. But then 9/11 happened and I grew a little worried about flying. And then I became a mom and pretty much decided it was TOTALLY irresponsible of me to go flitting about miles above the Earth. What if something happened and my babies were left here without me? I digress. I've been tossing & turning for the last two nights/mornings since we bought our tickets... I think I'm nervous. I also think I'm an idiot because everything will be fine and we will have a wonderful time.

*sigh*

Ok. Time for bed. 

Project356... Tomorrow!

Project365 ~ 133 to 139

It was a really long day. Thanks for sticking around!! Here is my Project365 for this week ~ better late than never!! Link up your Project365 at the bottom of this post!! 

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Project365 ~ Days 133 to 139

{From my SOOC Self Challenge! Check out the pictures here!}

Missed Day 134. Boo.

{My Personal Starbucks Counter ~ previously shared (unedited) in this week's Sunday Scavenger Hunt}

{Our Vacation Fund. Well, to go towards our vacation fund!!}

{Why Hellllllllllooooo Pre-Twins-Pregnancy Jeans... you lookin' mighty fine, myyy-teeeee fine.} 

{During late night cleaning, we found a secret stash of Easter candy under a couch.}

{Snowdrop. My Little Crazy Pants. She thinks this is the funniest thing ever!! And it is!!}

~

Please grab my button from the sidebar and link up!! Thanks so much!!

Hope you have a fabulous weekend! :) 

Crazy Week

Project365 will be up later this afternoon!

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Yesterday, on my mother-in-law's 57th birthday ~ and her 30-something wedding anniversary ~ we found out that some of her skin samples sent in for testing this week, tested positive for skin cancer. The "Basal" kind, so apparently the less scary kind... My MIL is not worried about it but of course I am. I am trying not to worry but anything with the word "cancer" is super scary to me. She is like the cornerstone of our family here in the Little City. There is no way I'd ever live up to all she does ~ so I hope we are able to nip this in the bud and get rid of it!! I want her here for a very long time. She has always treated me so well and truly accepted me as her daughter, not just an "in-law". I hope she's okay and not hiding anything. {She's not the type of person to do that so I don't really worry about that.}

Hubby's grandpa was just diagnosed with congestive heart failure this week. He is on some new meds that are helping to make him feel better. And will go for more testing this week. This is not "the end" for him but certainly an indicator that things are on the slow-down...  AND Hubby's dad hurt his leg {ankle & knee} and pretty much can't walk, so Hubby has been picking up some of his stops this week. I think he's having surgery soon for this. Not positive on that.

Seriously ~ We are falling apart over here!! 

SO in addition to this, my brother is going through a lot with PTSD {US Army/Afghanistan} and his marriage is suffering and things are.... let's just say pretty fu-barred in his life at the moment. I don't really want to get into the details but being in Afghanistan really messed him up. It's so hard to be there for him when he's across the country. I wish I could just drive over to his place and take him out, you know?

And MY grandpa {dad's dad} is finally getting out of the nursing home, after spending time there to recuperate from a nasty bought with pneumonia. The doctors say that it is out of one lung but that the other lung still shows something. Something. My grandparents have elected NOT to have further testing done and my grandpa should be going home soon. They have also found a nice plot at a cemetery down in FL. We {between my mom & I} do not know if they are hiding information {unlike my MIL, they would totally hide something serious from everyone and put on a good face anyways ~ not a bad thing, they are just VERY private about "private matters"}. So.... that's all going down, too.

So I've been dealing with a lot the last few days and thus have not really had time to work on blog stuff.

Good news though, my medicine seems to be working and other than a few odd side effects {vomiting of course, waking up at night, and tiny panic attacks here & there, forgetfulness} I am actually enjoying what it's doing to me. I want to post about that separately. But I wanted to share it now just to update anyone who might be following THAT part of my life...

~

Thanks for understanding!!!

All best wishes, prayers, good thoughts are welcome & needed!! :) Thank you!!!

Project365 will be up later.

Posters

 Just a quick little Thursday morning post. 

Whenever we go to a show or music festival we usually pick up a poster as our "souvenir". I bought a ton of matching frames from Target and when we used those up, I bought a bunch from Ikea. We had about six of our posters already hanging but so many more are still rolled up or waiting to be hung.

Last night, we FINALLY got around to hanging the ones that were going in our main room. {I someday hope to have a long hallway where we can display these.} The "Before" picture is actually after we had lasered/measured for the new ones. Hubby is SUPER anal about measuring correctly. I'm the type of person who likes to eyeball and whack a nail in the wall and hang it up. 

But we do it his way when he's home. :) 

BEFORE

We've always had three posters behind the couch. Recently we added three more as a top row (not showing here). The poster in the top right of this picture is new to the room. 

I forgot to snap a picture before we started. Oops!

 We DID have two posters on the wall near the table (which isn't showing here).

 AFTER

(The table is usually positioned under the four posters.)

I am SO GLAD we finally got around to finishing this project! It was basically just adding four frames to the wall BUT we did have to put together the hanging parts on the frames which took some time.

Magnolia noticed before she even got all the way downstairs: "Thank you Daddy for hanging pictures. I like very much." Too cute! :) 

So. Nowwwwww I just need to get paint so we can change the walls. I really don't like the shade of blue (everyone else does!) so I'm thinking something more along the lines of tan or grey. I just can't decide.