Lotion bars

I'm taking a break for the trip and posting a quick post about lotion bars. It's extremely cold here on the 'homestead' so our heat has been running non-stop. It's great to be warm, but my skin starts to crack when the warmth makes the air so dry. Enter lotion bars :)

I used to slather every kind of body butter on my hands several times a day. It would work for a while and then they would be dry again. More body butter. More drying. It was a never ending until spring cycle. Then I was given a lotion bar as a gift. Where has this been my whole life? Seriously! Where? How did I miss this? Well, being the cheap, er, I mean, resourceful person I am I looked them up on Pinterest and found a boat load of recipes for making them myself. Yay! A new recipe to try out! I'll share mine with you, but please know that this was taken from the 10+ recipes I read through. Not one in particular, but I'm not the inventor of the lotion bar ;)

Ingredients:

*Coconut Oil (I buy organic, but you can use whatever floats you boat. It's easily found in the cooking oil of my grocery store or Amazon.)

*Bees Wax (Try to buy local. It can also be found at Michael but the quality isn't good or Amazon, but local is best.)

*Almond oil (Found in my specialty grocery store. I'm sure Whole foods has it too.)

*Shea Butter (I found this at my sisters Whole Foods. If you can't find it just add more Almond Oil.)

*Essential Oil (You can use wherever scent you like. These can be found at Whole Foods, some grocery stores and Amazon.) This isn't necessary, but it's nice to give it a smell. Plus, they're very beneficial :)

Things needed:

*Double boiler

*Spatula

*Muffin Tin

*Muffin Tin Cups

Now for the recipe!

Add water to the bottom pan of the double boiler. Turn it on Medium heat.

Put muffin tin cups in the muffin tins. This will make approximately 5 lotion bars.

Put 1/4 cup beeswax in the top pan. The Beeswax will start to melt. Add 1/4 cup coconut oil, 1/8 cup almond oil and 1/8 cup Shea butter to the pan. All of them will turn to a liquid. Stir gently with your spatula. Remove from heat and add in 5 drops of essential oil. If you're combining more than one scent just try to keep the drops to 5. More will make it more potent and less will obviously make it less potent. Skip this step if you don't want a scent.

Working quickly pour liquid into muffin cups filling them half full.  Let them sit for a few hours so that they can become solid. Pop one out the the cup and rub onto your warm skin. After the shower is best. Vola! Lotion bars!

Notes: More beeswax makes it more solid, less makes it softer. If you aren't quick enough when filling your muffin cups (children are yelling about someone hanging from something, baby's on your hip because she woke up after a 15 minute nap, you hear your dog making puking noises, etc.) just reheat it to a liquid and then pour.

Now, if I missed something or need more instructions please leave me a comment. My sweet daughter was 'helping' me write this :)

Part Two

So, we're on the boat and make our way to our state rooms. They're more the size of a large walk-in closet, but they have everything you'll need (minus space). I'll add a pic of ours in here when I get them off of the camera. We had lunch and walked around the ship to see what our future held. We signed the kids up for their kids program. And then of course had dinner in our fancy attire. It's was a great first day.  That evening the captain came over the loud speaker and said that they would be sailing into some rough waters that evening and next day (10-12 ft waves which is about medium in wave talk, I'd say) and that you could pick up your complimentary Dramamine at guest services. Hmm... well I guess we were going to find out if any of our kids got sea sick right up front.

That night and the next morning we started swaying in our sleep. It was kind of nice while we were laying down. Like a giant rocking chair. We woke up and were doing ok until I got out of the shower. Ugh! I don't feel so great I thought. Maybe I'm just hungry because you know it's been over 9 hours since I ate a large meal.

We meet my parents and learn that Luke (who had slept in their cabin) wasn't feeling great. We walked up to the buffet slowly and I ended up having to meet them there if you catch my drift. By the time I find them I learn that Luke has puked on my dad and JD wasn't feeling well either. That started the awesome sea sickness that lasted the whole day. Everyone except for Eliza and my parents were sick. They enjoyed a nice lunch while we layer in bed and groaned. Yeah. Not fun! Luckily the waves calmed down and the ginger pills we took started to woke by that evening. So thankful that this was the only day we were sea sick.  We spent the next 2 days at sea enjoying the programs and food on board. And of course went swimming in the pool. Outside. In December. Yeah, it was warm!!!

Our first port was St. Kitts where we got rained on when we got off the ship, but it quickly cleared up and by the time we headed for the beach at 10 it was sunny and warm again. We swam in the ocean, ate flying fish or hamburger lunches and snorkeled some. It's was wonderful! I of course got a little sunburned as did Eliza. I think our genetic condition makes it harder for sunscreen to actually work, but I'm pretty sure my mom would roll her eyes at that statement :) It was a great day and a beautiful island. 

Our second port was Tortola, British Virgin Islands. We had excursions booked for this day. My dad and JD went scuba diving and the kids, my mom and I went to swim with a dolphin. Note: JD had to shave his gotee for this and it had me giggling for 2 days straight. He looked so different! The boys hada. Great time and saw a sting ray, barracuda and lots of other fish. JD was so excited and thankful for this opportunity. It was his first time, but hopefully not his last.

Our trip to swim with a dolphin was SO MUCH FUN! We weren't sure what the kids would do and hoped that Eliza especially would be ok in the water with it. They did amazing. They listened to the instructor, followed the directions and were in awe of the dolphin, Kelper. We got to touch his side as he swam, give him a kiss, have him touch his mouth to our hand and feed him a fish. He did tricks for us and sang Jingle Bells with us. It was great! The kids still talk about it. We unfortunately didn't get pics of this because we're too cheap to pay hundreds of dollars for a few pics. It's was great though!

To be continued again...

What a Wonderful Trip!

Our family just spent the last 10 days on a cruise ship and it was fabulous! We went with my parents and really enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong though. There were tantrums, puke and fighting, but add a beautiful cruise ship and sunny beaches in and those things get over looked. 

It started off in the early evening on a cold Friday night. JD got home, we threw the kids in the car and off we set out on our trip to MD at 5pm. JD quickly graded his finals while there was still day light while I drove. He had to get those grades submitted before we got on the boat the next day. We made it to my sisters house with only 1 stop on our 10 hour trip. Did I mention how thankful I am for my children's amazing bladders and ability to sleep in the car? Well, if not, I am! 2:30am and we rolled into my sisters house and crashed on her couches. We were exhausted!

The next morning my parents met us there and we headed off to the ship. Shew! That is a lot of luggage for 7 people and 11 days without washing. Winter clothes for before and after the cruise, summer clothes for while we're there, dress cloths for the dining room and must look extra fancy, snorkel gear because we have it and we're too cheap to rent something we own and of course shoes for all occasions and toys. Yeah. That's a lot of stuff!

We finally made it to the ship and got on board. I'm pretty sure I could hear a choir singing "Ahhh..." as we walked up the last ramp and crossed over the threshold. Vacation had begun and we were ready! Now, I'm sure you're thinking that's a really long intro and how long is this post going to actually be, but you see I HAD to tell you the before stuff so that you could get a clear picture of how we were feeling when we started out. We were tired, stressed, frazzled and every other exhaustion word. We were ready for this trip to begin.

To be continued...

I think I'm back...

I've been thinking about this little blog for a while now, but for some reason I just haven't wanted to post. I think the privacy setting was annoying to me. I don't like to log in to read things so why would anyone else? For that reason I'm making it public again and just going with it. I feel like I have lots to share about our lives and my personal thoughts. Hopefully I'll keep this going.

I'm going to make a list here of topics that I've wanted to write about so that 1 I remember and 2 you can remind me if I start slacking.

*Our family update
*Homeschooling
*Car seat safety
*Dinner prep
*All things cloth
*Crafty creations

Ok, let the adventure begin... again. For now though I must go get Eliza out of bed, get the kids dressed, start the laundry, do schooling with Luke, etc. all in a days work for this SAHM (stay at home mom).

Project time

We've been doing lots of projects around here lately. The kids really enjoy them and it gives some extra spice to the day. Today we did finger painting- Pinterest style.

 Idea from here.

All you do is put some blobs of paint in a zip lock bag, put a white piece of paper under it and tape it to the table with painters tape. Easy peasy! The kids then take their hands and write on the paint.

If you're Evelyn you use your whole body.

Lots of fun and virtually no clean up. That's my kind of project!

Sooo...

I kinda took the summer off without telling anyone here. It was too full of family time, Eliza's eye surgery and doctor appointments, parents and in laws and uncles and aunts coming to visit and vegetable gardening. Oh and I shouldn't forget the summer long heat wave that we had as well. It's hard to sit around and type when the house is 86*!

I think I'm back now though. We've started homeschooling Luke and JD starts back to work later this week. I'd really like to blog about our upcoming schooling adventures. I think there will be lots to talk about! For now though as I sit beside the campfire and enjoy our last camping trip before the craziness begins I wanted to leave you with this picture.

2 days, 5 states

That's right! We are taking an east coast tour for our summer vacation. The last 2 days were spent driving through 5 beautiful LONG states to get to GA. We're here so that I can go to my wonderful friends wedding tonight. It is totally worth the drive to be able to see her again and attend this beautiful ceremony. I am blessed to be here!

Tomorrow we head to SC where we will meet up with JD's parents for a night and go to the Columbia Zoo with them. We'll then travel to their house in NC for a week of visiting, Chick Fil A and the beach. Can't wait!

Finally we'll go to MD to see my family for a week. I'm still not sure what we'll be doing while there, but I know games, pool time and mom's yummy food will be involved!

See! I wasn't kidding about the East coast tour thing. It's a lot of driving and Eliza already cries when she sees the van. At least we're breaking it up with lots of great memories. I'll try to keep posting pics as we go! You'll feel like you're coming along with us (except for listening to screaming kids and "are we there yet" questions :)

First Strawberry

Today Evelyn was able to pick the first strawberry in our patch. What an exciting day! Last year a chipmunk ate all of the strawberries before they turned red. Yeah. We all took a tiny bite and I must say that it was delicious! I hope there are many more in our near future :)

So, I didn't get a pic of the strawberry because I forgot until it was too late. Instead of a pic of it I'll post one of the picker and eater.

11 Months!!!

Our sweet (and fiesty) Eliza Grace is 11 months old. I can't believe we have just one short month until she'll be a year old. This year is FLYING by!

This month was more challenging to get her pic because of course she doesn't want to just lay there and smile. She wanted to crawl around and have mommy pick her up. Oh well!

Eliza now has 3 teeth, army crawls everywhere in the house, is really trying to crawl on her hands and knees but falls every time, pulls up to her knees, has no interest in walking whatsoever, eats everything she can get her hands on,

doesn't care for spoon fed baby food anymore, loves to eat whatever we're eating and demands to do so, has a spunky personality, still loves her mama the most, says mama and dada when she wants to and loves to pick grass and eat it. She is fun!

She loves her brother and sister and loves to be tickled. She's got a great laugh, but uses it in reserve.

I can't wait to see what these next few months hold. She's still a tiny little girl, but I think she makes up for it in personality. So, that's our Eliza. Doing well and growing like a champ :)

Proud Mama Moment

Last night was the Awana awards ceremony. I must say that I am so proud of my little ones for all that they've done this year. They have memorized so many Bible verses and can still quote them to me. I love hearing Evelyn playing with her baby dolls and telling them a verse or two. So precious! Anyway, back to the point.

Luke finished his second Cubbie book and got a ribbon for all of his work. He is so proud of it and can't wait to be a Sparky next year.

Evelyn, though she was a little young to start Cubbies, finished her first book and got her little Cubbie bear for her vest. She was so excited and proud.

I just can't tell you how proud I am of them! It takes effort and determination for them to learn their verses. They do it with excitement and joy. I love to see God working on their little hearts even at this young age. They make their mama proud!

(Oh, and have I mentioned that I've been teaching them the Books of the Bible? They can both quote up to Esther already. Amazing, huh?)

She now looks like a boy.

Eliza finally got her first hair cut :( I've been putting it off for months now as I just didn't want to cut off her soft baby hair. Mind you, I know she had a mullet and it did NOT look pretty. I also know that she pulled out her hair on one side of her head so that it was now a half mullet. Yeah, still not pretty! But, this was the hair she was born with and it was so dark red. I wanted it to magically fill in and look cute. Didn't happen. So we finally decided that she needed it cut off.

I took a deep breath, set her in her Bumbo seat, asked JD to distract her and set off with the scissors.

I didn't go crazy. I just wanted the back to be somewhat even. Hopefully as her hair grows back in (from where she pulled it out) it will still be dark red and be just as soft.

  We shall see. In the mean time here's my sweet little Eliza with her boy hair cut. I'm thankful for bows ;)

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all of you! I hope you had a fabulous day celebrating our risen Savior.

Luke is looking so big today. I was so proud of him for being able to retell the whole Easter story to us. Love him!

Evelyn had to warm up to the camera today. She wasn't so sure that she wanted her picture taken. This girl is SO much like her mama. It's scary! We got her out of her funk by reminding her that her dress had pockets in it. This girl LOVES pockets! Can you tell?

Eliza was hamming it up! She loved to eat the grass and flowers while sitting there too. Can you tell the sun is in her eyes? I love how she squints ;)

This is our only halfway decent picture of the 3 of them together. I think they were all finished and just wanted to go find their Easter eggs. Oh well. At least we tried, right?

I have many, many more that I took today that are cute, but I need to cut this short. It's been a long day!

yeah.

(This picture cracks me up. I just love how she squints in the sunlight. Crazy windblown hair. And those cheeks!!! Perfect for kissing!)

So, it's been a long time since I've posted on here. It's not because I don't have anything to say. It's not even because I don't have any time. It's simply because by the time I do have enough time my mind is completely mush and all I want to do it stare. I don't want to be creative. I don't want to write. I just want to sit and not do anything. yeah.

Today Eliza turned 10 months old. I really can't believe she's already that old. I can't believe that in 2 short months she will be a year old. Where did the time go? I actually did take pics of her today, but I don't have time to upload them right now. She is finally growing though ;) She's army crawling around the house. She has a fabulous temper when someone takes something away from her. She enjoys grunting LOUDLY when she wants more food. She's getting her second tooth. One on the bottom. One on the top. Very interesting looking. She's saying "Mama" too. I am especially excited about this as both of the other kids said "Dada" first. It doesn't matter if I'm in the middle of 10 things. She'll say, "mamama", crawl over to me and touch my toes and how can I help but pick her up and give her kisses. She melts my heart. yeah.

Only a month and a half until JD's finished with school. Need I say more about that? yeah.

Luke and Evelyn are best buddies and worst enemies. It really just depends on the second. They play together so well and enjoy lots of the same things. Luke kindly plays mommy and daddy with Evelyn and Evelyn kindly plays trains with Luke. Many times throughout the day I see or hear them and am brought back to my childhood. The fighting. The laughter. The silly games. The forts on the beds. The countless hours of hide and seek. It makes me wish that I could go back in time for just a minute and relive that part of my life. yeah.

As for me... hmm... I don't know. I'm still knitting up a storm. I'm desperately trying to keep our house clean and lives running smoothly. I'm doing preschool with the older kiddos. I'm snuggling Eliza constantly. I'm playing with my iphone. I'm on the hunt for great bargains. I'm just living life as a mom of 3 kids. yeah.

Life is good. Life is busy. Life is sunshine and rainbows. Life is clouds and thunder. yeah.

Sickies

We've been down for the count for 9 days now and I must say that it's getting old. We're all tired of staying home and not doing anything. There's only so many hours you can be with each other before you all start going a little batty.

Funny story though. Last night we were talking about what to have for dinner. We are now on a budget for eating out and had already spent that weekly allowance. We asked Evelyn what she wanted to eat and she told us she wanted to go out to eat. We told her that unfortunately we didn't have any more money for that this week. She then disappears for a few minutes. We hear her piggy bank rattling. She then reappears with her $1 and some change and says, "Now we can go to Steak Eatery". (That's the local steakhouse.) It was so cute! She was totally willing to take us all out on her dime. If it hadn't been so late and we weren't all still not feeling well we would have totally blown our budget and taken her out. Love my sweet, giving girl!

The iPhone love

It's so nice to have a phone that I can easily post from. It's been a busy day with busy kids in our busy life. At least I can have this second of peace to pop in and say hi! Now let me try to add a pic too :)

If only there was more time.

I would love to share with each of you:

*Luke's birthday!
*Luke's party
*Eliza turning 8 months
*Our preschooling fun
*Eliza's first tooth
*Our fun field trip
*Playing in the mud
*Evelyn's awesome made up songs
*A few projects I've finished

The list could go on and on. I have so much to share, but no time and energy to do it. I'm desperately trying to keep our house somewhat clean. I'm trying to keep on top of doing preschool with Luke and Evelyn. I'm trying to clean up our diet. All of this takes so much time so my poor blog has suffered. I will get back to you some day, dear blog. If only I didn't need to sleep!

Cloth Diapers

I've had people give me every reaction under the sun when I tell them that we use cloth diapers. Some of them include- "Gross! I could never do that!", "Why?", "That must take you a lot of extra time.", "Is it really better to do all of those extra loads of laundry than to just throw away a diaper?". The list goes on from there. Some people are really interested though and it's for those people that I write this post.

Where to start. Well, I guess I'll tell you why we switched to cloth almost 4 1/2 years ago. Luke was about 6 months old. He was a great pooper. And by great I mean he could blast it out of his diaper and onto his clothes in a matter of seconds. The boy had skills, I tell you! I started researching cloth because I had a couple of online friends that used them. I figured that I was scrubbing out poopy clothes anyway. Why not at least try cloth. At least then I wouldn't have to scrub. We bought a starter pack of several prefolds, covers and 2 Bum Genius One Sized pockets and starting using them. To our surprise he amazingly didn't blow out of these diapers. No more scrubbing onesies!!! I was hooked, so off we took on our cloth diapering adventure.

Over the years we've used them on all three children. We've tried pockets, all in ones, prefolds, fitteds. We've used PUL covers and wool ones. The only thing that I can think of that we haven't tried are pins. I just refuse to have anything pointy near a squiggly baby. Snappi's work just fine! We've had some of our diapers for all three children and they are still going strong. We've tried some and they just didn't work for our kiddos at all. Those were quickly sold off to a new home where they could be used. We've bought new diapers and used ones. We've even been given some. Oh, and I made some, but that was a while ago.

All that to say that we've tried them all and now have the perfect stash of used, pooped in, but great working diapers. My laundry routine is usually to wash them every other day. Some times it's 2 days in between. I throw them in the washer, either dry or hang dry them and fold them or stuff them back together. Nothing difficult. We use natural laundry soap so there aren't any brightners, etc in the diapers. Those can cause stink in diapers or rashes on baby's bum. We would use that soap anyway though. If baby (or Eliza) poops in the diaper we simply dump it in the toilet. (Did you know you're supposed to do that with disposibles too? Throwing away poop is against the dump laws.) If the diaper gets wet we change it. None of that "It's not that wet" stuff. Pee is pee. Change your baby!

Now cost. Well, you can definitely go to both extreme's with cloth diapering. You can do bare essentials and spend next to nothing. You can buy all the latest cute diapers and spend LOTS. Or you can be like us and every so often get a new diaper, but mostly just use what you have. Starting up is the biggest cost. It's hard to spend all of that money at one time. Do a little math though and add up how much you're going to be saving every single month for at least 2 years and you'll quickly realize that it's worth it. $9 a week (for chlorine free disposible diapers) for 2 years= $936. That's of course not thinking about sick weeks when you go through more than one pack. $20 for 1 Onesize BG X 20 diapers= $400 (and you can well them when you finished with them and make back some of the money. Oh, and these aren't the cheapest by far. You could easily spend only $100.) And if your child's not trained by 2 years old? No problem. Just keep using said diapers.

Benefits:

No chemicals on baby bum.

Saving money.

Super cute diapers :)

Less rashes and problems with asthma.

Usually faster potty training.

Negatives:

Extra laundry.

Upfront cost.

Having to dump poop in the toilet (though you're supposed to do this either way)

I hope I was a little informative for those who have little ones in diapers. I have tons more that I could say, but don't want to overwhelm you. There are lots of sites that I use and like for more information. If you're interested just leave a comment :)

A little of this, a little of that.

Finger painting with the little ones today.

Teething 7 month old strapped to my chest.

75% finished sweater vest on my knitting needles.

Mostly clean house with mostly clean clothes.

Snow waiting to be sledded over.

Iphone in hand.

Smile on face.

I'm walking on Sunshine!

Source

Today might be a gloomy cold day.

It might be filled with puking kiddos and crying, teething babies.

We might all be stuck in the house all day long with each other.

Our house might just explode from the amount of stuff everywhere.

But all of that doesn't really matter. I'm walking on sunshine today because we're all together and safe. Thank you, God for another day with my beautiful family!

Busy, but with what?

Source

I feel like I always have a million things to do. Anyone else feel like that? I have this invisible list in my head at all times with things I *need* to do, things I *want* to do and things that I really *should* be doing. Some times I write out a list. Sometimes I lay in bed at night and repeat the list a few times in hopes that I'll remember.

Right now though as I'm sitting here thinking that I really need to be doing something so that I can check off a part of my list I realize that most things on said list are just things that I'd like to do. I have 8 crafts in my head that I want to accomplish. I'd really like for all of the laundry to be finished and for the dishes to all be clean. I'd like to be able to walk across our living room floor and not step on something sharp, er, I mean one of the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of Thomas trains that are strewn across the floor. None of these things will ever be accomplished. Yes, I'll create something, but then I'll go on pinterest and find 4 more I want to do. Yes, laundry will find it's way in the washer, but I've realized that I will never have all of the clothes clean at one time. I do have Evelyn as a daughter! If the floor is actually clean it will just be destroyed again when the kids wake up.

Yes, if I really admitted it the lists aren't really that important. Things will get finished- eventually. I really need to just chill out on the lists running through my head. I need to stop thinking of the future things that I need to get done. I need to just enjoy the moment. I need to sit with Luke and play trains...again. Those are the things that really matter in the grand scheme of things.

Off to take my own advise.