Wow, it has been quite a while since I last posted.  Some really amazing things have been happening in my life.  I hate that I haven’t had time to post as often as I had planned to.  I really will be trying to post more often in the future.

So where to start?  We are about half way through the school year here, I know the kids are happy about that!  Baseball season is getting ready to start up and my daughter wants to play softball this season.  We are really excited for her to give this a try! The boys are anxiously waiting the pine car derby for boy scouts.

I am really enjoying my classes this semester.  I have transferred over to Liberty University’s online psychology program, and can’t begin to explain how awesome this school is. It is more challenging than a public style school, but in a good way.  I have learned so much about my self and my faith this semester!

I am also a part of a great Bible study that you will likely hear a lot about! Our current study is on Discerning the Voice of God, so amazing!  I have also been reading some great new books on my new e reader.  I will post more about that in a few days, I can’t wait to share how awesome this little thing is!

You always here people say “there is no such thing as a stupid question”, but I wonder if there really is?  Having three kids I have heard some crazy questions, but coming from children it usually isn’t a stupid.  How about when it’s an adult asking the questions?  What about college kids/adults?

I was sitting in my abnormal psychology class recently and some of the questions the other students were asking the professor were just unnecessary.  And the worst part was the answers were already stated, or located in the syllabus that was already supposed to be read.  These students went on for well over twenty minutes.  They asked questions over and over about the same topic and just rewarded them.

It was so frustrating to those of us that wanted to get on with the class lecture for the day.

So do you lovely readers think that there truly are stupid questions?  and if so should the person in charge (teacher, caregiver, doctor, ect) put an end to them or allow them to continue?

Well, my kids have gone back to school this week!  It was bittersweet for me, Lily has started middle school.  I’m excited for her to start this new chapter, but I’m so nervous for her.  Middle school is where most people meet some of their life long friends.  I have given her all the skill I can to choose the best friends she can, and how to avoid the bullies. I’m sure there will be some bumps along the way, but I feel like together I can help her work thru them!

The boys are becoming better friends as time goes.  Last night they were deciding what to wear and where they would sit at breakfast when they got to school!  It’s great to see them working together more.  Charlie is able to see the importance of behaving at school and focusing on his work, I hope it last thru the year.

Zach is a little upset because he has to sit with all girls, but I guess if this is our biggest concern after the first day of Kindergarten we aren’t doing to bad!

How are you guys handling the start of school for your children?

Sorry it’s been a little while since my last post, but things have been super busy with moving my shop.  The new building is built, however, it’s not complete.  We cleaned out and moved everything from the old location, so that’s a relief!  Now once the interior is complete I can set up the shop and productively do my work, until then I guess I’ll be working out of the kitchen.  This should be interesting with all the kids home for the summer!

Now I can hopefully get back to posting useful posts!  Thanks for your patients while I go thru this transition!

I used to be really bad about updating my contacts.  The only time they got updated was when I needed to contact that person or place and the number was changed or they had moved.  Then I would have to track them down and change the info.  So to avoid that, over the last year or so I have been trying to update my contact sheet (in my home binder) as often as possible.

I finished my summer contact update about a month ago.  This includes things like, the local library, A/C technician, community pool, my kids friends parent info, summer camp, and recreation department.  This way when I need to contact these people or places everything is current!  I try to at least complete the updates a month or two before I would need to contact the person, i.e. the pool before summer swimming begins!

So now I am working on Fall contacts, scout leaders, schools, coach info, tutors, finding out what the library hours will be starting in fall!

Something new I am going to start doing is carrying personal business cards, they will say something like my name, mother of (kids names), what i do, girl scout leader, custom shirt designer, baseball mom, and of course my home and cell number.  This way I can just hand them out to teachers, parents, anyone that would need to know that info.  This keeps from writing it all down on the back of a receipt in the check out line!

This is just another tip to help keep things moving smoothly for you and your family!

If you are like me and your kids are like my kids, you have more school papers and art projects than you know what to do with.  As we all know they come home through out the school year and then the last week of the year it seems like a paper mill has moved into the kitchen!  There are drawings and paintings and page after page of stories all over the place.

Now we know that if they catch us just tossing them in the trash, we have just thrown all their talent and time away.  So if your like me you lovingly go through all the papers and say how awesome they are and how you wish you have a fridge the size of Texas to hang them on.  Then when they go to bed you toss the ones that you don’t want to keep and you quickly tie up the trash bag and take it out side!

But, what do you do with the ones you did keep?  And all the holiday decor they made for you?

I have a solution!  I three ring binder, with sheet protectors!  You could use one for each kid for each year, or combine all of elem in one and all of middle school in one.  If you combine them make sure to use dividers for each year or child so that when you go back to see the difference in their work you know who’s is who’s!

This way, when ever you or they want to look back at the work they have done it’s nice, neat, and protected!  This is also a great gift for Grandma and Grandpa!  Wouldn’t they love to have a whole book of all their dear little grand child’s art work!

So I have been running my business (a custom shirt/hat shop) from a store front for about six months now!  While it has been a great adventure, and a huge learning experience, I have decided to move it back home!

Let me start from the beginning.  I have been thinking about opening my own store for many years.  I have sold online, in yard sales, through friends and family, but I wanted to try a store front.  Things went really well getting it set up, finding a location, filling it with merchandise and what not.

The trouble is while it is great fun being a store owner, there is a tremendous amount of responsibility with it.  I ended up not having all the help I was originally told I would have, so I ended up being the only person here from open to close every day.  This was not to big a deal, until I started thinking about what I would do with the kiddos when school was out for the summer.  I knew there was no way they could sit at the shop for all those hours everyday, and we couldn’t afford daycare either.

So I have decided to cut out my gift shop items and just do my custom shirts and hats (which is the biggest part of the business) from a shop at home.  Now my dear talented husband is going to build me the shop of my dreams.  haha  At least that was the plan until we started checking in to lumber cost.  It may take a little longer than thought to get the shop up and running, but one day (hopefully soon) it will be completed!

So for the next month or so I will be running the current location on shortened hours and having some great sales on the gift type items, and the kids and I will be packing up!  I really can’t wait to get moved back home so I can focus on designing shirts and hats for current customers and working on finding new ones!

So if my post seem  hit or miss for the next little bit I apologize and, please bare with me while we go through this transition!  I am also working on a few shirt designs for us moms that are organized and loving it or are in organization training!

Well, it’s that time of year again!  The kids are out of school for the summer!  They are super excited about the adventures we are going on, and to be honest I am excited as well.

This up coming week we are taking it easy and working on our list of adventures!  They don’t know it yet but we will also be organizing the house and making sure things are done and ready to go for the summer!  This way each day when we get up we can get started on that days adventure right away with out having to do unpleasant chores first!

We have our adventure bags packed and ready, now we just have to plan out the adventures!

Some of the adventures we are going on are:

1. Tour of a potato chip factory
2. hiking at a local park
3. swimming at the lake
4. A trip to Washington D.C. to visit family
5. A trip to Smith Mountain Lake Dam
6. Many trips to the local park
7. The petting zoo
8. A picnic
9. The library
10. To see a movie

And I’m sure there are many more that they are going to add to the list this week!  My goal is to find something different for each day, and as low cost as possible and as close to home as possible!

What are your adventures for the summer?

Do you need to freshen up your go to cake?  This cake is really a crowd pleaser, and it’s so simple to make!  My son Charlie loves to bake this cake he made one this year for his third grade picnic and everyone love it!  He was so proud of his self.  Sorry there is no picture but they ate it before I could get a picture!

This cake can be made in a sheet pan, cupcakes, a bundt pan, loaf pan, really any style you want you’ll just have to adjust the baking time!

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 box lemon cake mix
1 box lemon-flavored instant pudding mix (3.4 oz)
12 oz. Mountain Dew
¾ cup vegetable oil
4 lrg. eggs

How to do it:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Lightly grease and flour bundt pan.

In a large mixing bowl, combine cake mix and pudding mix. Add soda, oil and eggs. Beat at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan, and bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.

Let cool in pan for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool completely on a wire rack.

Glaze

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
several teaspoons Mountain Dew

(I like a somewhat think glaze so I use more powdered sugar)

Stir together until glaze is a thick drizzling consistency. Drizzle over cooled cake. Make sure cake is completely cooled!

This year I decided that the kids and I are going to have an adventurous summer!  I’m trying to find all the free or inexpensive things to do with in 50 miles or so of our town.  The kids love to have little trips planned, and it help to encourage they get their chores done!

I get so annoyed when we go out for the day and they have a million things they need, band aid, a drink, a tissue, broken flip flops ect.  So I decided that we would need adventure bags for our trips this summer.  I looked online and found some good ideas as far as what to put in them, but I didn’t want to buy new bags for them to drag thru the creek and to stomp around the van on. lol  Sooo I took their school book bags and washed them up and I started filling them.

Heres a list of what we have in them so far:

• Hand Sanitizer
• tissue packets
• hand wipes
• cool fold able water bottles (made by valpur)
• notebook and pen ( we will be doing a crafty cover for these on a rainy day)
• a few sandwich size zipper baggies ( to collect rocks and whatever else they want to drag home)
• First aid kit (just the $1 one )
• bug repellant wipes
• small container of sun screen
• I am going to make a small id card to hide in the inside pocket of the bag, this will have limited info such as only my cell number, any allergies or medications they are on and that’s about it.  You don’t want to give a possible predator to much info, not even the kids names!
• We may have little bags we add for special trips like, magnifying glasses and specimen jars for the park, specific to the type of outing!
• They received child safe cameras for Christmas this year so we will be adding those and extra batteries!
• And each day they will add a small snack for the day

Thats all we have so far!  Please leave a comment with any additional items you would but in them!

I’m hoping these items make our trips a little more pleasant this year!  So far the kids are really excited about this because they have been getting into all the survival shows with their dad and they have started calling them their “bug out bags”.  This may be a summer to remember!