Look what I just did!

I love this food site! It regularly has awesome ideas I want to try like this, or this, or this. Today we tried these muffins. They are SUPER easy with only two main ingredients. I actually made mini muffins. I also only did half a batch. So here's what I did.

1 spice cake mix

1 15oz can of pumpkin

I mixed these two together. Then I used a little cookie scoop to dish them into the mini muffin pan and sprinkled on a streusel topping made of 1/2 cup flour, 1/4 cup brown sugar and 3 Tbls. chilled butter. (I thought I was using so much. Next time, I would be much more generous with the streusel topping and maybe press it in a little bit.)

Baked 'em for about 10 minutes at 350*

In the remaining cake mixture I stirred in some mini chocolate chips. Scooped them into the muffin tin (I added some regular choc chips to the top for 'decorative purposes'. Totally unnecessary and really didn't help); baked for about 10 minutes and ta-da! I'm a gourmet muffin chef!

Extra bonus? (Like these need one!) I can let the demanding 2 year old eat all the dough she wants because. . . . . .NO EGGS!! Hooray!

This is my life:

2:45 a.m. Wake up to feed hungry baby

3:10 a.m. Fall back into bed grateful for feedings that no longer take an hour


4:00 a.m. Assist 2-year-old into bed because she's on my side, I'm too tired to take her back to bed and I know she will snuggle up next to daddy and pretty much leave me alone. (poor daddy...)


4:30 a.m. Have pangs of guilt in my semi-conscience state because daddy has given up sleeping and is now reading via flashlight


4:30-6:00 a.m. Sometimes asleep, sometimes awake wondering at how I can just look at not sleeping 2 year old and marvel that she is beautiful. Really, I should be wanting to spank her little tushie but all I can ponder is how funny and sweet she is trying to get someone to read her stories.


6:00 a.m. Finally get up to plug in monkey movie for 2 year old. Poor daddy is heading to work. If he can't sleep he may as well be billing time.


6:15 a.m. Convince 5 year old that it is still the middle of the night and he should just go back to sleep. (Thankfully it was still dark.)


6:20-6:55 a.m. Read in bed


7:00 a.m. Finally go back to sleep


7:10 a.m. 5 year old comes in to tell me, "Great news mom! We lost the Ladybug!" (as in K is asleep) before going back to bed himself, again.


7:47 a.m. 2 year old (who is no longer asleep) wanders in to inquire after breakfast


7:52 a.m Baby is ready for feeding again


8:10 a.m. 5 year old no longer believes it is the middle of the night


*sigh*



On a completely different note: WE SIGNED ON OUR HOUSE TODAY!!!! So now only 2-3 days before we actually have the keys and can begin mad remodeling.

Self Conversations

House buying me: "I'd better check my phone to see if anyone has called."
Sensible me: "You just woke up, it is too early for a bank or escrow company to call yet."
House buying me: "yeahbut...."
Sensible me: "No yeahbut. It's too early."
House buying me (in whiney voice): "Fine."

Later....
House buying me: "I'd better check my email. You know, just in case..."
Sensible me: "Not likely..."
House buying me: "Back off. I'm checking."

Later....
House buying me: "What if someone called while I was in the shower?"
Sensible me: "D would have told you. Or more likely, K would have brought you the phone."
House buying me: "They don't always do that."
Sensible me: "Oh, go ahead and check. You know you're going to anyway."

Still later....
House buying me: "I'd better check my phone again."
Sensible me: "IT'S IN YOUR POCKET FOOL. IF IT HAD RANG YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN."
House buying me: "Nu-uh. What if I didn't hear it or feel it vibrate? It could happen. It happens to mom all the time."
Sensible me: "Didn't hear it ring...didn't hear it vibrate...listen to yourself. You are pathetic."
House buying me: "I know. Now give me that phone."

So it is noon. I've only check me email twice. That's good. The phone? Let's just say I haven't missed any calls. But if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go check just to make sure.

Another house update

Roy just talked to our loan officer who said he's ordered the loan docs. He says they should be back today or tomorrow. I want to be excited and I am but I am also skeptical. This is not the first time I've heard "today or tomorrow" in this process. Cross your fingers for a Friday close date. Then we can remodel and getouttahere!

Hey! How's the house going?

I'll tell you how the house is going. I STILL LIVE IN THE MOLDY CREEK APARTMENTS. How's that for an update. I love banks. seriously.

When we applied for a loan:
Us: "How long does it usually take to close?"
Them: "Oh, we close in 30 days. We have all this blah de blah and yadda yadda so we can close in 30 days."
Us: "Nice."

So now today, I am celebrating the 37th day of our loan lock. Yippee! Happy day 37 to me! Now, I know that many of you are out there thinking, "37 days, big deal." IT IS A BIG DEAL PEOPLE! We are going to start the rainy season here soon and I do not want to get locked in my apartment by overgrown mold! Besides, the mildew smell is bad enough without it being rainy season!

I have all my remodel plans figured out because we are doing some light remodeling before moving in. We are cleaning (serious-hire-a-professional-because-those-people-were-dirty-cleaning), painting (because as much as I love the mauve doors and dark green toilet cave they have to go) and redoing the floors (indoor dog. need I say more?)
So we will have laminate floors in the kitchen/dining/entry space and new carpet through out the rest of the house. I could use some advice about main interior color. Roy votes white so he has lost all voting privileges.

Instead of fighting with blogger in this particular post, I will post pictures in a post below this one. If you have any great ideas for what I should do with the large living space please let me know. If any of you have super interior decorating ideas, feel free to share. Or better yet, you can always COME on over and visit my new house with me! What a great idea!

New house pictures

The house:

Entry:

Kitchen:

Dining/Family Space (Kitchen is just out of view on the right-

you can barely see the edge of the bar. Stairs are just out of

view on the left- you can barely see the edge of the banister.

Entry is behind photographer.):

Stairs:

Downstairs:Upstairs hallway -- notice the doors. lovely.:

What the what?!

They are too stinkin' cute!

She's feeding her Mow.

A is 2 months

We had her two month check up earlier this week. She is 13 lbs 4 oz and about 24" long. Basically she is big. She is strong and holds her head well. The doctor says that A is "socially mature" because she is so smiley and responsive as such a young age. I love it! This girl is a serious smiler. She also hardly ever cries. I was at a meeting last night and A was getting fussy. Naturally I recognized it because I am the mom. The other women though were commenting on how she was doing so well. I just smiled. She fooled them all!

She got her shots. :( Not fun. She only cried while she was on the table though. As soon as I picked her up she was better.

K also had to get a shot while we were there. She cried like she'd been whipped. When she stopped she just kept telling me "owie" and pointing to the spot on her leg. Repeatedly. Hours later when daddy got home, she told him all about her "owie" although she didn't point to the right spot.

D is good. No shots for him. I didn't even take him with me. He would freak in the hospital whenever a nurse or technician would come in to poke A so I figured I didn't need him at the doc's office with me.

In other news we might close on our house next week. Or we might not. We were told last week that our loan was out of underwriting. Then yesterday we got notice that underwriting was sending the appraiser back out (on our dime of course) to take some more pictures. This was hours before we were notified that the escrow company has the signed deed and is ready to close whenever we are. *sigh* If it isn't one thing it is another. It's not all bad though. I really do need to finalize what colors I am going to paint and hire a cleaner and finalize a flooring company because we want to do all that before we move in.

Last night I took a trip....sort of...

For those of you who don't know, I've been having headaches for a couple of weeks now. I finally went to the doctor last week. I was hoping for an easy fix like an ear or sinus infection. Nope. As she put it, "Another new mom in need of a massage." (If only I could convince my insurance that it was indeed medically necessary!) So, tension, stress, fatigue, dehydration, all of the above. (Stress? Tension? REALLY?! Why would I possibly have stress and tension? I mean it isn't like I'm raising three small children in an even smaller two bedroom apartment while buying a home and planning a remodel of said home even thought underwriting is taking it's time under writing or whatever they do. Whew.)
Okay, back to my trip. So the doc gave me some heavy duty drugs in case I needed them. I took one that day and haven't used any since. Then last night I was feeling really bad. I decided the one I took had been so slow to do anything and hadn't been as effective as I wanted I would take two. It's okay, that's the actual recommended dose.
WOWSERS! My headache started going away about the time the dizziness started. Then the drowsiness set in accompanied by nausea and a sort of tunnel vision. I have vague and unclear memories from last night. I WILL NEVER TAKE TWO OF THOSE RIDICULOUS THINGS AGAIN! I can't even say the headache went away entirely because the medicine caused a different headache! Less painful, but still... I don't know what the deal is with this med but apparently I don't react to if very well. Good to know.

My Baby Turns 5!

The Birthday Boy with his Friend

Today was D's birthday. He turned the big 0-5. (As opposed to the big 5-0) We decided to have a party for him at the park. So of course it rained yesterday and most of today. Fortunately there was a break in the weather right during the party!

We invited upwards of 20 kids. Well, technically, we invited about 12 but by the time you count the siblings that I knew would come. . . yeah, 20ish kids.

We ended up with about a dozen or so. Really, I lose track. I must say that I marvel that back in the day my mother (bless her apparently sainted heart) would have birthday parties with as many kids WHERE THE PARENTS DIDN'T STAY! That's right, I love this new way of partying where parents bring their children and STAY!

Anyway, the party. We did it at the park so the kids played on the playground for an hour or so. Then I had some cardboard boxes (delved into the moving stash). Kids and cardboard boxes, need I say more? Well, I will. We set out markers, crayons, sidewalk chalk and colored pencils so they could decorate their box like a train. Mostly this involved scribbling. One kid did a flame job on his box. Creative.

After decorating the boxes, the kids got inside and we had them walk around the playground like a train. D loved being the engineer. (Oops, forgot to say HE LOVES TRAINS.) If I can figure out how, I will post the video of parents trying to organize kids and cardboard boxes into a train. Funny.

Then we had train cake. Opened presents and played on the playground until everyone went home. D had a great time which makes the party a huge success.

I am so happy to have my 5-year old.