Health conscious...ALWAYS

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.


This week I did NOT go to an exercise class mostly because I knew it would mean a quiet hour to myself while my kids splashed and played in the (supervised) pool! I am always health conscious and always exercise purely for the health benefits!

This week I also did NOT make chili for a gathering of friends and as I was creating...decided to throw in the leftover fajita fixings...and spanish rice...and a taco meat/bean mixture...because I hated to think of them going to waste in my fridge. I ALWAYS cook from recipes, and NEVER would use leftovers when making food to share with others! (The chili was good, by the way!)

What about you??

The utility sink

I cleaned my utility sink today. It really needed it. It has been used and abused from the various projects at our house over the past few years. It is just a cheap plastic sink, but it has had quite a road with us.

It's story began at our first house. It was an old house (read "built in 1896" old!). It had had a laundry area built on off the kitchen, but it didn't have a utility sink. We really wanted a place for Mike to be able to clean up from the many (read "unending") projects on that house. We had NO extra money, and really no place to put a formal utility sink, so we bought the cheapest of cheap sinks that could be bought. We hoped to work some way to have it in the round basement of the house (yes, the original basement of the house was a round brick area with a dirt floor. Turns out that was pretty common in the era the house was built. What wasn't so common was that this particular round basement ended up having a river run through it in the Spring because it was at the base of a large hill).

Anyway, I digress...we never did work out a way to have it hooked up in that fantastic basement before we bought our current house and moved. The utility sink sat in a shed at our current house for many years (why we moved a cheap plastic utility sink neither Mike or I really know at this point, but for whatever reason, we did).

Our new house did have a utility sink in the laundry room, but it was pretty old and yucky. At some point, my dear husband decided to take out the yucky sink and put in the cheap plastic sink that had been neglected for many years. It was still an improvement! Cheap or not, I now had a nice "new" clean sink to use in the laundry room.

Problem: we use our utility sinks really hard. We have done LOTS of destruction, construction, painting, landscaping, and who knows what else, that have involved the sink being used pretty harshly. The sink had gotten to the point that just a regular scrub  wasn't going to clean it anymore.

So this weekend I cleaned it.

Get ready to ooh and ahh!!

What? Oh, maybe I should have included a "before" picture. It is just a cheap plastic utility sink after all!

Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics by Aleah Faith Amundson

Instrument design and manufacturing by Aleah Faith Amundson

Performance by Dylan and Aleah Faith Amundson

My husband

I have had the pleasure of being married to this man for over 16 years. We have been together for over 20 years. (as he would say, we obviously got married when we were 13 ;))

He is a man that will do so much for his family (even if that means getting a puppy!)

He is a man who knows what he wants and isn't afraid to ask for it

(This picture is of him with 2 (requested) birthday gifts...a snuggie and ShamWow!)

He isn't afraid of making fun of himself!

(this is him as a bearded lady for Halloween one year)

He loves spending time with his family

(all of us at a drive-in movie)

He is adventurous and loving

He is patient and empathetic

(daddy and Dylan after surgery for Dylan's toes)

He loves having fun with friends

(and he loves BIG fires. More that one is even better!)

He loves to spend time with our kids, and comes up with great activities with them

He is caring and gentle

He is proud of his kids 

 

He is proud of his (big) accomplishments

He isn't afraid of the "dirty" parts of parenting

He is still a kid at heart

(Ruh, Roh Raggy!)

He loves to create memories

Dylan's 5th birthday

Aleah's 6th birthday

He is a man that when his baby daughter has a bad cold, and incredible snot bubbles, will go get a camera to capture the moment before wiping the nose.



I am so thankful for this man that is my husband!

Happy Birthday (Yesterday) Sweetheart!

Candy and movies and laundry, oh my!

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

As for me...

I have NOT totally ignored the extreme candy consumption in my household since Halloween! I always monitor the amount of candy my children eat, and don't ever allow a free-for-all to avoid the confrontation that is bound to happen!

I also did not decide to just pay the late fees for FIVE movies this weekend (for 2 extra days!!) because I kept forgetting to return them, and wanted to watch all of them, and was too lazy when I realized they were still in our house for yet another evening! So glad they are from Red Box!! (if some of you don't know about Red Box, you need to check it out and lobby to get them in your area!)

and finally...
I have not left a load of clothes in the dryer for the past 3 or 4 days because I had fun company for the weekend and didn't want to be bothered by folding and putting away laundry!

What about you? What have you NOT done this week?

Oh, you gotta have friends...

This weekend I had the joy of having a dear friend come to visit. She and I went through our Master’s Degree program together. We spent 2 ½ years together studying, learning, crying, stressing, and helping each other survive. We have only seen each other once in the nearly 12 years since we graduated, though. Life has just gone by and we haven’t made it work out. This weekend we finally remedied that. She came to spend the entire weekend with my family and me.


It was so good! We got to sit and catch up on the past 12 years. I have two kids now. She is expecting her first (so excited for the arrival of that very special little girl!)


A lot has happened in our lives since we knew each other so well, but in reality, none of that mattered. True friendship doesn’t matter how many years have passed. A friend is still a friend, and always will be.

We walked our dogs by a river, we had lunch at a fun place, we watched movies, laughed a lot. Our dogs played and played and played (well, maybe my dog antagonized her dog...constantly).


My dear husband helped meet pregnancy cravings,


we shared meals,


we watched a "play" put on by my 6-year-old, we painted pictures,


and we just enjoyed being together.

We reminisced about “old times”: how Mike used to make us dinner or treats when we were together studying, remembering our different professors and classmates, remembering some of the fun times we had. It was so good!
(The only thing we were missing was the 3rd member of our trio…(hi Jen!)).
Ah…good friends. You gotta have ‘em!

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween going trick-or-treating in my old neighborhood.
My parents still live in the house I grew up in, so we almost always head back there for Halloween with my sister and her family as well. This is a great thing for a few reasons:
1) we live in the country, so would have to travel several miles to get to the number of houses we can hit in just a square block in my old neighborhood

2) our whole family gets to see all of the kids'costumes. With my sister's family, there are 7 kids total, so seeing the variety of custumes is lots of fun!
(from left to right: a Packer, an Indian girl, a princess, Hermoine from Harry Potter, an "army guy", an aloof teenager (my sister's words first...Connor, you are great!), and Robin Hood)

3) My dad's birthday is on October 30, so we can all be together to celebrate (1 day late)

4) having a "tradition" is such a great thing for kids (at least our kids)! They love knowing what they can count on each year!
(Can you see all of the kids? The 6 with costumes are all represented in this picture!)

5) It is so much fun to be back in my "old" neighborhood and see some of the neighbors that have been there since I was little. What a treat for them to know my kids too! I know lots of people have issues with Halloween and where it got its "start". In our family we look at it as a time to get together, dress up in fun costumes (we never do scary or "ghoulish") and of course, get lots of candy (that mom makes disappear after a few days). It is great being a college teacher so I can "share" my kids' plunder with my students once I am ready for it to be out of the house.

As I type that, I realize that I haven't shared much about who I am, and what I do each day, so that will have to be a post in the near future.

So... back to our Halloween. We had a quick pizza supper together, went around the neighborhood, came back "home", my dad opened his presents, we had cake, and we brought extremely tired kids home. Great evening!
This year the whole crew included my mom, dad, grandma, aunt, uncle, cousin and his wife, sister, brother-in-law, 5 nieces and nephews, my 2 kids, my hubby, and me!

On a side note, check out just a taste of the creativity of some people who live near my parents!
It is a "must" for us to go to this house every year and see what they did THIS year!

They have dozens of pumpins carved. I just took pictures of a few of them! They have bonfires and candles, and lots of "animated" Halloween characters. I didn't photograph them because they freak my daughter out!

Whether you celebrate Halloween or not, I hope you had a chance to enjoy your family as much as we enjoyed ours!