Valentine's Day

Today's small thing was to let someone know that you were thinking of them today. I did this before I even read Rachel Anne's assignment for today. This morning, when I got onto Facebook, I dropped by the walls of a number of friends and wished them a Happy Valentine's Day, sent them my love and let them know that I was thinking of them.

The one friend who stands out most right now in my mind and my heart is my friend, Erin. Her hubby recently deployed and she's home with their three kiddos, adapting to yet another period of time with him gone for the military. She is one of the most incredible women that I know and she knows that I think that too. I wish I was there today to bring her flowers and chocolate and coffee and to give her a chance to relax and rejuvenate, but we live many many miles apart and it's just not possible. But she was the first one on my mind when I got onto Facebook this morning. I visited her page, another friend's page (who doesn't like Valentine's Day - and then to boot - her grandpa died today too), and many more.

This afternoon, Hubby and I sat down and talked with the kids about some changes that we have decided to make around the house involving screen time and chores. We have decided to limit the kids' screen time to one hour per day. I am so tired of screen time being such a huge focus and the kids not knowing what to do with themselves without a screen in front of them to entertain them. We also decided that allowance will be freely given, chores will be done before screen time is allowed and it will be done with a cheerful attitude or screen time will not be allowed at all.

Natty complained and whined and cried about the changes, while JoNo buckled down and got right to work. JoNo went so far above and beyond that there will be little for the kids to do tomorrow. Well, there will still be plenty to do, but in comparison to what there was to do today, there will be very little.

Natty was incredibly upset and at one point, we sent him up to his room, where he laid on his bed, whining and complaining about the changes. I laid down on JoNo's bed across the room from Natty and we talked. He poured out the troubles that were in his heart and I just listened. Sometimes that is the hardest thing to do. I want to jump in, give him advice, tell him how to fix it, analyze it, whatever... But all he needs is someone to listen. Which, thankfully today, I did. And it seemed to do wonders for him as well. As I was leaving his room, I told him that he was welcome to come back down whenever he felt ready to.

Then, Natty and I made supper together tonight. We did a breakfast for supper, which is a family favorite. I let him do all the measuring and mixing for homemade pancakes. I didn't even supervise directly. I just told him what he needed and let him measure and pour, stir and mix and all of that. It also gave him a chance to show off some of his math skills, since we were doubling the recipe. Amounts like 2 1/2 cups of flour, he was quick to know was 5 cups with our modified recipe. And 3 teaspoons, he immediately knew was actually 1 1/2 from the original recipe. We changed it up and some of the time I would tell him the amount from the original recipe and some of the time I would give him the amount from the modified recipe. I figured a bit of a confidence boost would be good for his spirits and it was. He is very proficient in his math skills and I knew that having the opportunity to show those skills off and to cook at the same time would be a major mood lifter for him.

He also wanted to make a special pancake for Boo - so Boo got a Mickey Mouse pancake. Then he wanted to make a special one for Punky - so we made her a flower - complete with petals and a stem. I made a car-shaped pancake for JoNo, which he loved. It looked like a VW Bug. It was cute.

And to show my Hubby my love today, when I was helping the kids get their Valentines cards finished up before school, I also stashed away a bunch of mini bars of Hershey's milk chocolate. We had gotten a mixed bag of mini bars - Hershey's milk chocolate, Hershey's special dark chocolate, Mr Goodbar and Krackle. Hubby prefers milk chocolate to any other chocolate and I wanted him to know that I was thinking of him too, so I grabbed a bunch of the regular milk chocolate bars and "hid" them in a decorative cup next to the container where I put all of the leftover Valentine's candy. I let Hubby know about his "secret stash" of milk chocolate and he seemed quite pleased that I had thought of him in this way today.

But it is late now and I am tired, so I am going to end this now and tally up my point totals.

Points for today: 50 points!
Points for February:  380 points!

'Round the table they go!

We have four children. Four messy eating children. We have six chairs at our table, one for each of us. I try to get the chairs wiped off at least once a week. My grandmother did it every single time she did dishes (which was directly following each meal and then once before bed - four times a day in all!), but well, I'm not that accomplished. Although, I suppose if I did, it'd be less of a job for both the chairs and the dishes to get done. Hmm...something to think about.

Today's task is to clean off the chairs around the table. I did it the best that I could. At some point, Boo has gotten pink paint on a couple of the chairs and I have not been able to get it off. Although, let me tell you! I have most definitely tried to do so! I wiped down the chairs, getting the magic marker off of one, crusty milk off of another, and then just giving them all a good overall cleaning. Which is great because Hubby wants to have guests over tomorrow for dinner, so provided that the chairs stay clean, they will look as great as they can for our guests.

Nice timing on this one, Rachel Anne! :)

Points for today: 40 points!
Points for February: 330 points!

(There were extra points available for today - an extra 30! But I didn't wipe down an extra set of chairs. I got distracted by some other jobs that I wanted to get done and well, yeah, it just didn't happen!)

Time For Me Thursday

Thursdays are the days that Katie had deemed as a day to blog about some time that we spend on ourselves. As a parent, a spouse, an employee or whatever, it's hard to find time to really do something for yourself. You spend so much time focusing on your kids, your mate, or your job, that you don't often stop and take time just for yourself. Katie's designation of Thursday to blog about this is also my reminder of my need to take this time for myself.

I consider blogging to be something that I do for myself. It's my time to get my thoughts out of my head and into written form. It's also a place to share the things that I am working on around the house or with the kids or whatever, that the people in my regular, everyday life are really not interested in hearing about. And who knows? Maybe you all don't really want to read about it either, but it's still there. :)

I have not had much chance to knit recently, so I am contemplating that as an option of something to do today. Maybe a little bit of knitting and some Grey's Anatomy on the agenda for tonight. Sounds like a date with myself to me! :) That is my plan for this evening. Knitting and Grey's, pure bliss!

Workin' Out Wednesday

I have joined a friend on their weight loss blog and I have been working out quite a bit and trying to watch/limit my calorie intake and so far in the last three days that I have been really working on it, I have done really well. I joined a site called "Lose It" and I have been using it to really monitor my calorie intake and my exercise. It's been a real eye-opener, let me tell you! Oh and if you are also working to lose weight or exercise more or whatever, and decide to join (it is free, by the way!) leave me a comment and we can be friends on there and encourage each other!

So, today I want to share about my work out summary and goals for the coming week:

Monday, I had planned to do my Jillian Michael "30 Day Shred" dvd, but every time I moved my right shoulder and elbow or my left knee, it was just bone on bone grinding, which neither sounds nor feels good. So instead, I did some vigorous housecleaning and weight lifting.

Tuesday, I did some weights again and also did the exercise bike at the inlaw's house.

Then today, I did some sit ups. My stomach muscles are definitely not what they used to be! Oh wow! But it still felt good to do that.

After reading some information, it says that you need to give your muscles a day off between working out, so if I want to work out every day, I need to make sure that I'm working different muscle groups. So I think I will do arms one day, legs another day and abs a third day. That way each muscle set will have two days off between workouts. I think that is a good plan.

Quiet Corner

 

Hmmm, my own corner...well, that used to be in our bedroom. We have an old brown recliner in our room that came from Hubby's paternal grandparents (I feel the need to distinguish this because there is a pink recliner in our living room that came from Hubby's  maternal grandparents) where I often would spend time on my laptop or reading or just relaxing.

I have not been able to do this much recently because our room has been undergoing some major changes (new drapes, planning on a new bedroom furniture set sometime soon, hopefully) and well, my corner is currently buried under boxes that need to be gone through and sorted and well, honestly, I don't have time for that at this point. Also, I need to do a number of other tasks before I can deal with that one.

So, I decided to do my second corner, which includes the pink chair in the living room. It is my second choice for reading, writing, relaxing and reclining. I tidied this area up, vacuumed, cleared off the table, brought up a small pillow I like to tuck in behind my lower back and even sprayed the chair with some fabric refresher just because I like the scent. So nice and comfy and pretty looking (and smelling!) now.

There was also a secondary assignment to enjoy the space for 10 minutes, which I definitely did. I sat down and relaxed and read blogs and typed up this post and did some hunting online for exercise bikes. I'm sure I spent way more than 10 minutes on this assignment. But um, I just wanted to make sure that I had a chance to enjoy the corner before the kids got to it again! LOL!

Points for today: 40 points!

Bonus points for today: 20 points!

Points for February: 290 points!

Wordless Wednesday

I snapped this picture of Miss PunkyPie yesterday afternoon. She had been playing around putting sunglasses on her stuffed animals and on our family dog, Freddy. Then she asked me to take a picture of her and her little brother's stuffed puppy. I complied because, honestly, who could say no to this face:

Back Door

 

Yesterday I posted about our launch and landing pads and today's assignment from Rachel Anne is to clean up the area near our back door. Well, this is really easy. We actually have two back doors. One we refer to as the back door, which is directly opposite the front door and goes out to the yard behind our house. The other back door opens to one side of our house and we refer to that one as the side door. But that door often gets mistaken as our front door because we live on a corner lot and our address is on that street, while our front door is actually facing the other street. It confuses delivery people to no end!

So, for this task, I actually did the area near our side door. The reason that I said that this was really easy is because during the winter, we keep this door closed and locked and don't use it at all if possible. The main reason is because it's a sliding door that opens directly onto carpet and I don't want the salt and mud and wet coming in onto the carpet.

However, there was some tidying up to do down there. And I also needed to get things ready for later this month when we will be changing out the window coverings. We live in a rental and it has vertical blinds covering this door. We want to put up some energy conserving drapes. They have a thermal back and they also block out light. I don't know if I want to get rid of the blinds completely, but I do want the drapes up over them at the very least.

So I prepared the area for that and overall did a quick tidy of the area. It looks so  much better now! And I didn't even think it looked bad to start!

Points for today: 40 points!

Points for February: 230 points!