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Evelyn is a scary monster

This is a dinosaur hat I bought for Evelyn a couple of years ago in the river market.  Sometimes she wears it when she's a monster. Lately, all monsters are scary monsters.  This includes dinosaurs, as well as the skinks and pythons at the zoo.

Tonight, she put on the hat and was a scary monster who had to go scare Daddy at least 5 times.

Here are her claws. I had just trimmed them, and I guess she was in awe of her own power. I told her the plates on her hat protected her head and skull.  She was really excited to be reminded that she has a skull of her very own inside her head.

She used her claws to shield her eyes from the  flash. I love this fearless creature so much. Posted by Jen at 9:33 PM No comments: Links to this post 

A post about a Christmas party

Brook and Chris hosted a Christmas party over a month ago. Here are some pictures.

Brook made a fancy holiday ham! Aunt Jessi held 2 baby cousins at once! Here was the tree that Evelyn couldn't get enough of! She also couldn't get enough of the dinosaurs that live on the coffee table, and made sure that Aunt Jessi knew what she was doing at all times.  The presence of those other babies rattled her a bit, and she was a little afraid that Aunt Jessi was going to let someone else play the princess game on her phone. Tender family scene. Baby friends! Baby feelings!  And a toddler in a Cracker Barrel dress playing princess games on an iPhone. Really, the perfect gathering for this bunch.
Posted by Jen at 10:17 PM No comments: Links to this post Labels: Christmas, family, friends, parties


New Year, New Setup?

I've been paring down.  Again.

I've been doing it on evenings when Evelyn's gone/Cody's at work in bits and pieces for the past couple of months.  Stuff's been piling up for the past......3 years or so?  I don't know.  I'm usually in some kind of decluttering state, but it's been pretty extreme in the past few weeks.  I've been selling old clothes on ebay, knitting up yarn, rearranging books and I've been really surprised about how it doesn't even matter.  So I've been determined to see a difference.

Last week was a good week.  I spent 4 hours cleaning out crap one night.  It was just crap, mostly.  I reorganized, wiped down, and cleaned out 4 cabinets in the kitchen and it was pretty great.  Actually, it kind of sucked.  I got out rid of a lot of bottle things I was kind of holding onto, but there was no point.  Chewed up bottle things were thrown out.  Chewed up sippy cups were thrown out.  Coffee mugs I didn't like were thrown out.

Seriously, I threw things out.  If I didn't love it enough to pack it up when I moved, it was out.

We're not going to talk about the expensive and expired baking ingredients that I threw out because I think I trashed $75 worth of idiotic baking ingredients and canned beans because some them were older than Evelyn.  That made me angry because there were 2 nearly full bags of vital wheat gluten that haven't been safe for human consumption in years that I know cost at least $12 a piece.  Ugh.

The nice thing about the food cabinet reorganization was that a bunch of junk went into Ziploc bags.  The stuff will be safe and the cabinets will be clean. I know this looks a little bare, but we need to go to the store.  And now we actually know what we have and don't have, and when we do get something we'll have a place to put it!  My freaking favorite.

You know what we don't need?  6 pounds of cornmeal, that's what.  Because now I know we have that.

Ugh, whatever.  Here's another cabinet. I held onto the pumping accessories sterilizing bag because it's great for doing a quick sterilizing of pacifiers or whatever.  Some of our serving dishes have been moved up here, on top of the fridge.  It's not that hard to get to, and we can totally hop up there 3 or 4 times a year. Evelyn's silverware is on top of the microwave because all of the bottle/medicine stuff is off the top of the microwave.  Medicine has been moved to the medicine cabinet.  Plus, this was a nice use of some of our jars.  We have a lot of jars and we don't can that much.  More on that later. Throwing out a lot of Evelyn's annihilated cups and unwanted coffee cups cleared up some space.  I also threw out a lot of glass bottles.  We hang on to a lot of Coke bottles because....I have no idea why.  Just no.  This is much better. Back to the jars.  Ta da! Cleaning up the china cabinet made me the happiest.  I've got our jelly sorted on the top shelf, pints and half-pint jars on the shelf below that.  Vases and heirloom tea cups are on the shelf below that.  On the very bottom shelf I just have some paper plates for parties, a chicken candy dish because that seems worth displaying, a tea cup, and a beeswax candle because I guess I'm insufferable.  Keeping candles put away behind a cabinet away from little hands but easily accessible in case of a storm seems like a good idea.

I feel a little bit better about our home and I thought you should know about some nice things going on around here.

Posted by Jen at 9:50 PM No comments: Links to this post Labels: decluttering, home decorating


A post for 2014


We're alive.  Tired, cold, and cranky, but otherwise fine.

Cody has a temp job and it's going well.

Evelyn is cranky and weird because cold weather gets her down and she's 2.  She's still mostly sweet, and gets better at puzzles every day.

I'm tired, but fine.  And fine with being tired.  I knit and crochet and stress over things.  Work is good.  I'm fine with saying I'm good at my job.  It's my career.  It's okay to say that I want to have a career.

Also, I made a pair of mittens.  They're warm and I'm proud. I still haven't finished my Christmas knitting.  Oops.

You may have noticed that you didn't get a Christmas card.  I was tired.  You'll get a Valentine, though.

I cut Evelyn's hair the other night and have yet to take a picture. She moves a lot, and hasn't wanted her picture take lately.

I need to get my act together for Ateca's baby shower this weekend.  I need to buy a book and wrap a gift and get directions to the shower, etc.  It seems like just a couple of months ago we were laughing way too loud at work and getting goofy about the Duggars.  It makes me happy that we're in charge of raising small humans.

It's nearly time to get Evelyn in the tub.  Good night.

Posted by Jen at 7:52 PM No comments: Links to this post