Camping trip and Shatto Milk Company

This weekend we went on a camping trip with our friends. It was a blast. We are exhausted, but it was great. Friday night my family camped by ourselves, then Sat. was the Shatto Milk Company tour, then Sat. night 5 families camped with us. It was great. Here are some photos.

Another week

Another week has practically flown by. We did our usual routine. Gioia had her last day of dance class this week. We will start her back in the fall. She had a great time. This summer we will do soccer and swim lessons. We go camping with our friends this weekend. Hopefully it will be sunny and warm. Today is the third week I have had my friends son for the day. OH MY! It is crazy having two 3 year olds in the house. I think when we are done having him for the school year, we will be finished with watching other kids. He is a great kid, but having 3 to chase under the age of 4 is insane. Think we will be waiting a while for our own #3.

Mystery shopping

Today I did my first Mystery Shopping at Whole Foods. I love whole foods, they carry everything Organic under the sun and awesome products. I had to shop in the bakery and produce sections and ask the team members a question about their section and stuff. All in secret. It was fun. I have to turn my stuff in this evening and i get reimbursed $10 worth of groceries plus 7. 75 for my time. Fun!

We watched my friends little boys last night. It was pretty fun. We ate dinner, played outside then started a movie. All the kids got along great. I said "See we can handle four." He said, "Anyone can say that on a good day. " I think he is right. :)

BUZZ!!!

We have been fighting the cradle cap, flakey scalp stuff on Dominic since he was born. At 12 months or so I used TTO (Tea Tree Oil) on it and it went away after one application. Well now it is back and his hair is too long and thick for me to treat it efficiently. SOOO>>>>>> DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!! Baby's first buzzcut!



















Gioia said "Is that our brother?" HA HA!! He does look different. Scroll down to see the pictures of him from the other day (with hair).

Horsey ride.

So we were coming home from somewhere this weekend and the neighbors were having a garage sale. I scored this for $15.00. You all remember these from childhood right?



















Gioia gets stickers in the mail from her Great grandma every week. Today she did something we been wanting to do for a long time. How great is this? Is this legal to do when she gets too loud? *just kidding*..sort of...

Planning a vacation.

Lord is there anything more stressful than planning a vacation? I mean its exciting, but its stress to find the right place to stay, what are you gonna do when you are there and all that. I guess it is more so because my kids are little and I have to find things they will like to do and not TOO much. I think we are going to go to Colorado. DH loves it and I have never been. We are trying to coordinate it so my good friend and her kids can go with us.

The sun is back and it was about upper 60's I think yesterday, maybe it hit 70. Anyway, we went to Deanna Rose farm and pet the goats. We were there an hour and the kids had a great time and played hard. Today the plan is go to the park later and I might even try to mow the yard. That would be a nice surprise for my hubby.

Friday the 13th.

Wow. Long time no posts. I can't believe its been a week already. We have been busy, but not all for the good. Last weekend was Easter and it was good. Fairly uneventful. We went to church and had a nice lunch at home. Then Gioia started barfing. I guess she had the 24 hour flu. She was back to full speed by Monday morning. Tuesday I woke up nauseous. Oh, no...I was sick as a dog all day Tuesday. It was awful. Hubby can home a little early from work to save me. I went straight to bed and didn't come out except to barf. YUCK!!! Wed. I felt better. Dominic got sick one time during the night and then he was fine come Thursday morning. Thursday I had to watch my friends son during the day, cause he has speech therapy here in town. Last night I was dead tired and just want to do NOTHING today. It has been a hard week.

So today is Friday the 13th. We are gonna call it a relaxing number 13th and just hang out all day. One nice thing did happen. My mom called and talked to me on Wed. when I was recovering and asked if I was still sick. She was offering to come help watch the kids. I should have just faked it and let her come. Ha Ha! It was nice to have her offer though.

Here is what the kids been up to lately.

Purple hair.

Massimo was out of town on business this week for 3 days. SO the kids and I went to visit my sister. We had lunch with her and grandma (my mom), then I went and got my hair done. My trendy cousin cut it for me and added some color, blonde and purple. It looks great. I love it! Then we spent the night and had a great time. Last night was moms night out. We all went for dinner and ice cream. My good friend is getting divorced and her husband is being a royal ass. Now this is not uncommon for divorcing couples, but he is going above and beyond with his jerkiness. :) Is that even a word? Well its the right word, even if its made up.

Here is a picture of my new do. Sun was in my face so please ignore the scowl! :)

Happy Aprils Fools Day!

Its April 1st. It is spring and beautiful outside! 3 friends had their babies in the last two weeks. One more is due and we are anxiously waiting her baby's arrival. What fun all these new babies! 3 were born at home. 1 was born at the birth center. Yeah for natural births!! One of the births was particularly exciting because she WANTED a home birth, but because her 1st child was a c-section she had a midwife but was going to go to the hospital. Baby had another idea. He came in 2 hours and they never went to the hospital. I am so happy she got the birth she wanted!

We went looking at trees for our yard. We didn't find anything exciting, so we are just going to keep looking and thinking about what we really want. We bought a bunch of grass seed and fertilizer for the yard instead of trees.

Gioia is going to be the flower girl in my cousins wedding in October. Sarah (the bride) brought the flower girl dress today for Gioia to try on. It is beautiful. Turns out the smallest size was a 5. Gioia is wearing size 4 right now, however, the 5 fit great. I am so glad. Here is a picture of her in it. Its a little hard to see in the picture but the dress has baby blue trim and ribbon and embroidery all over the body of it. It looks great on her.

Same old same old...

Nothing much going on. Same old Same old.. :) Yesterday we planted flowers in the front yard. Today we went and got new sand for the sandbox. That is about it. Tomorrow Gioia has Dance class. Last week was spring break so she didn't have dance and she is ready to go back. My tooth has finally stopped hurting. I go Thursday to get the crown put on. I hope he doesn't have to do too much to it, so it won't hurt again.

Nice weekend.

Yesterday my mom friends and I did a Lets Dish style cooking club at my house. It went really well. In the course of about 3 hours we had drinks of wine, snacks, and made 6 meals each. Then you freeze the meals and Voila! you have dinner for 6 evenings.

Then today we went to church. Then we went to the Dog park with the dogs and kids. It was really fun. Gioia was not being a very good listener, but she finally shaped up. ;) I also found out that my friend had her baby today! He was born at home and was 11 lbs. HOLY MOLY!! I am very excited for them though.

Night weaning. Oh my!

Well as you all probably know we are still going strong on the nursing. My son is now almost 19 months and he LOVES his "Nur-ney!" We nurse several times and day and until recently at night. I love the snuggling, but I am read to sleep better again. I have never been one of those mamas who could fall asleep while the baby is nursing. SOO... he has been showing signs of readiness for night weaning, I decided to give it a go.

It went REALLY well last night! He nursed to sleep about 8:30pm, didn't wake up until 12am. He started crying and throwing a fit (before I even said no), so I said "What is the matter?" Then he calmed down and said Nur-ney. I said, Nursing is night night. You can snuggle mommy. He stopped looked at me and made this horribly sad face, but it lasted all of 10 seconds. Then he stuck his hand down my shirt and tried to go back to sleep. It actually took him 40 minutes to get back to sleep, but he was just restless. He wasn't crying or fussing.

Then he woke up again about 2 or 3am (not sure) then again about 3:30. Each time I told him Nursing was night night. He asked at 2 but at 3:30 he didn't ask.

I finally nursed him at 5am when he was waking up. After he nursed a whole bunch he went back to sleep until 7:15.

So he went 8:30pm to 5am without nursing. Oh I did bring him his binky and he only used it during that first 40 minutes that he was trying to get to sleep. I gave him a drink of water in a sippy at 2am, because I thought he might be thirsty.

Gorilla bars..

Thats right. Gorilla bars, aka Granola bars. Gioia insists that they are "Gorilla bars" and she even corrects me when I say Granola bars. We made some today. Dh wanted me to try it with less flour, to make them more granola and less cereal bars. Uh... they taste good, but do not stick together properly. Oh well. They are yummy none the less. Gioia is also having a great time pretending she is Wendy and playing Peter Pan. She even uses the English accent and all that, calling him "Pete-ah". It is really cute. She has also been a Mouse this week.

I went to the dentist again, and he fixed my temporary crown a little more. I hope it helps it feel better. i really do NOT want to have a Root Canal.

Saturday we are having our homemade version of Lets Dish at my house. We are making 6 meals (3 meat, 3 veggie) and then we freeze them. It should be fun.

My beautiful lunch.

I made a beautiful tasty pizza. It had whole wheat crust, tomato sauce, sausage, spinach, red pepper, cheddar cheese and a delicious Garlic cheese from Whole Foods. It was so beautiful I took a picture of it! :)

Free at Last! Praise God I am free at last!

WOO HOO!! I just closed and cut up my discover card! i have carried a balance on it since 1998. How embarassing....

It has a zero balance and it is NO MORE!!! *happy dance**

Love Shrek!

This is too cute not to blog about. So Gioia is singing the song "Love Shack". It goes "Love Shrek, hhmmmm hmm Love Shrek" "Your what? Henrooo busted. Love Shrek baby Love Shrek!"

HA HA!!!

We went to Pump It Up for playtime today. It was soo fun. The kids love it and Dominic is big enough to do it himself. So that is nice for me.

Paths that cross.

I always find it interesting when you are on a path and you keep running into others on the same journey as you. It makes me wonder....are they put there to help us, for us to feel not alone, or were they there the whole time but we are just now noticing them? Case in point. Tonight we had to wait up late for a guy to come get paperwork about a car we sold them. We sold the car 2 weeks ago and my husband said it was a college kid. Turns out, it is a 17 year old. He came with his dad to get the papers and the subject got around to the fact that they are a homeschooling family. Awesome! So we had a good chat about that. We will probably run into this family again. And I knew it! I told my husband after they left, "I knew they were my people!" He just laughed. The dads name is Smoky, he had a rice pack (that he heated in my microwave) for his neck, they said they gave their other car to a family that didn't have one, Ok... you do the math.

Caterpillar Picnic

Today was a beautiful day. We had Gioias Dance class, then we just played outside all day. It was great. The kids dug in the dirt all day outside. Gioia found a caterpillar, earthworm and we saw a lot of birds.

Mean mamma!

So today we are at the Sprint store, trying to get my phone fixed. They finally tell me that they have to order a new one. Fine. It will be here Friday. UGH!! Ok...whatever. So i say Ok kids time to go. Dominic doesn't want to go. He wants to run around the Sprint store. I scoop him up and start to carry him out and he is screaming. So I jokingly say Oh I'm such a Mean Momma! Dominic replies "MEE MOMMA, MEE MOMMA!"

Then I got him to say Nice momma. And he will also say NIce Do-ah (Gioia).

My Mouf is numb....

UGH! I had to have dental work done today. An old filling out and a crown put on. All in all it wasn't that bad. For the first time ever it didn't hurt to get the numbing shots. My dentist has a little thing that vibrates when he injects you and it didn't hurt at all. Only took him a few minutes to get my old mercury filling out, and an hour total to do all the work. It was pretty good. My whole right side of my face was numb. Now the numb has wore off, it hurts! AAGHH!! :( It also hurt my pocketbook to pay for it. Dang!! I have to go back in two weeks to have the permanent crown put on.

My phone is also dead. I am not sure what happened, I suspect one of my kids. I took it in today to get it fixed. I will know more tomorrow. Its a new phone, GRRR! At least I have the warranty plan on it.