~Summer time food~

This was such a great summer evening meal! Tuna Salad, Turkery and Bacon Sandwich with some strawberries!

I didn't get a picture but I made chicken legs for my daycare the other day for lunch. Wow, I have never gotten such good reviews. One child said she felt like she was eating at a resturant because they tasted so good!
What I did-
clean chicken legs
dip in melted butter (yeah not really fat free)
lay chicken legs in baking dish
sprinkle with lots of Rotisserie Chicken seasoning

(you could also probably dip chicken in olive oil)

Bake chicken at 350* until fully cooked.

I do have to say they did taste pretty good. Must have been the butter!

~Mr. Mason is 11 months old~

This was my baby at Christmas time.

Now my baby is 11 months old today!

He tried out the pool this week and he loved it.

He splashed us all.

He finally enjoys taking a bath and now he cries when I get him out.

He did not like taking baths when he was younger.

Mason is such a cutie!

He's been eating all kinds of new foods and he eats alot too.

More than his sisters.

He loves to go outside and he loves to dance to music.

He crawls and get where ever he wants to go.

I can not believe its been 11 months already.

He is growing up way too fast but he will

always be my baby!

Flowers!!

Some more pictures of the front of the Wynn house!

I know I've already shown you alot but these are some new ones!

This is to show you a before picture.

(How terrible it looks in the front.)

Finally we have flowers!!

I love it!!

We even have 2 window baskets!!

I wanted to also share this picture of the steps.

We just recently started using these steps due to some road work going on around here.

It never entered my mind to clean them

until the other day I looked at them and realized all the dirt and weeds.

So just 15 minutes of my time and look it here- clean steps!

I am still just amazed it took me 2 years to think about doing this.

I wish I had a before picture.

~Diggin~

Danny diggin for gold  rock!

 

Abby and Maddi diggin for rocks bugs!

~One more sleep~

Just one more sleep and we get to go pick up Jade and Abby!!

We allowed them for the first time to go to their grandma's house for a visit (birth mom's mom). Well, their first visit since we have had them full time.

When we first got the girls full-time they hadn't seen their grandma for about 6 months. We allowed her to come to town and visit with them at a hotel. They went swimming and had alot of fun. Danny stayed there with them while they visited.

Over time we allowed them to go alone and spend time with their grandma while she was in town. Then we even allowed them to spend the night.

Now this time she came to pick them up Thursday late afternoon and we will meet her on Sunday to get them. They were going to stay at her place which is a few hours away. They had plans to attend a movie, go swimming and visit great-grandma.

It was not an easy thing to do. It took us 2.5 years to build up this trust. Was I ready? Not exactly. Friday was a hard time as I kept waiting for them to wake up and come running down the steps. I had to keep myself very busy.

When they left it brought back so many memories of all the times their mom would come pick them up from our place Sunday night and we would wait for their return in 2 weeks. I could not imagine doing that again.

I love my girls and can't wait to go get them, just one more sleep!

~Sticky Buns~

Wow, I don't even have the right word to tell you how wonderful my breakfast was today! We had caramel sticky Buns! They tasted so good and I made them myself.

I would invite you over to share some but

I don't think there will be any left much longer.

Seriously these are to die for.

They melt in your mouth!

I won't mention that they have 200 calories in each one.

(I shared with the kiddos today so I didn't use the pecans the recipe called for. I used 10.6 oz. can of biscuits and doubled the carmel topping)

~Wordless Wednesday~

Backpack and Tuna!

Jade got a new backpack for 3rd grade.

She also got a matching lunch bag!

Rumor has it Jade thought I was crabby. At least that's what she told Gradma Robin.

So just in case I was I took her out to lunch and to do some school shopping.

Just the 2 of us.

Subway lovers~ I am not happy with Subway.

Jade wanted lunch there.

Ok, fine.

I asked for a footlong tuna since that is a $5 sandwich.

I don't do chips. Figured leftover sandwich could be saved for later.

Jade asked for a kids pack with Tuna.

Lady put tuna on the bread and then said

"sorry we're no longer aloud to do tuna on kids packs".

She already had tuna on the bread.

She told me we needed to pick another meat or

not get a tuna kids pack and go for a tuna 6 inch.

Now I had gotten this for Jade many times before but I guess its a new thing.

I said well you already made it we'll just take this one.

She said there was no kids pack tuna on her register.

The lady said NO NO.

Seriously they could ring it up a turkey sandwich one time?

I asked her what she was going to do with the sandwich and the

other lady there said throw it away.

I was pissed. I said you're going to waste a good sandwich you just made?

So I got mad and said I didn't belive in wasting and since

I couldn't eat a full footlong we were

NOT buying another sandwich, we would share.

And sure enough I watched the lady toss

a perfectly good 3 inch kids sandwich in the trash.

~A Special Birthday~

This little peanut was born to my sister a tad bit too early on July 17, 2009.

We all spent some time visiting her in the hospital and watching her grow.

She started out at 3 pounds.

As the days went on she grew bigger and learned how to eat and went home!

 Now that little peanut my sister named Faith

celebrated her 1st birthday on Satuday!

Faith is a very lucky little girl!

A healthy one too!

Now weighing in at 21 pounds!

(I think that is what my sister said)

The kids got to play pin the tail on the donkey!

Blowing bubbles!

(or more so making a mess)

My brothers and I gave Faith a picnic table!

I think she already likes it.

Her 1st cake!

We love you Faith and we're so happy we got to celebrate with you!

We can't wait for birthday number 2!

Baby Blog Swap!

There's nothing better than getting a great package in the mail!

Kelly over at Three kids, a minivan and a lot of love hosted a Baby Blog Swap. Are you asking what that is? Well I will tell you. Kelly posted on her blog that if anyone was interested in swapping package for their young children they could email her. The rules were basically having small children or be expecting a child. Kelly partnered everyone up. You were to spend $30 on your partner not including shipping. Now who doesn't love to shop for kid stuff!?!?!

I had alot of fun with this and I also got another blog to follow! I was partnered up with Jess over at Our Little Blessings! She has an adorable little girl and a sweet baby boy angle in Heaven. I sent her some bubbles, cute toddler color crayons that were shapped as animals, a rainbow book, a t-shirt, and some hair bows (I hope I didn't forget something). Then just because moms need to get special things to and I know Jess really deserved something for herself I sent a note pad and some body wash for her.

We loved our package and Jess did a great job and found something for all 4 of the kids!

Here is the package I sent out!

I hope Jess didn't have too big of a mess, I packaged

her gift with packing peanuts!

(It was hubby's idea)

Here's our package!

We got lots of great stuff~ 3 shirts for Mason, a pair of shorts and a car!

Paints, colored pencils, stickers, paper and some coloring/work books for Maddison!

4 puzzles and 2 games for Jade and Abbygail!

Of course Mason loved playing with the box!

Maddison couldn't wait to get painting!

A good look at what was in our package!

Thanks, Jess. We all loved the goodies you sent.

Panties and vomit

Oh what a day. You ever wonder what a person does all day with their time? Having 4 kids and a daycare keeps me very busy.

Just so that you know I've been busy today I wanted to pop in and tell you I am now potty training a daycare child so her mom could go camping. She came today in cute little disney panties! Yeah seriously do you pay more when they are disney.... not sure you need disney panties for training but what do I know. Lets just say this child had never gone potty for me before today and has only been working on it a short short time at home. Mom wanted to the whole put the kid in underwear and go for it. But she had to go camping so here I am to save the day! I don't mind helping out but couldn't ya try at home first for a few days? So I have had a few accidents to clean up.

Then Miss Maddison is under the weather today. Yesterday she had a fever and runny nose. Fever never went above 100.0. So that's good. She didn't eat much and slept alot. Today she is not doing much better. So she and daddy are the way to the doctor because while helping her go potty she decided to vomit all over her crazy mommy!

I guess nobody said every day as a child care provider or mommy was going to easy!

Oh and just to add to the mix, my van is broken. Hubby was taking a look at it before he left with Maddison. So now of course plans have to change since we are a large family and can not travel all in the car. Its always something, isn't it.

~$2 and alot of fun~

Last week I attended a daycare clean up sale.

Are you asking what that is?

Well, basically a daycare provider who wants to sell some toys that either her kids no longer play with or they just feel they have too many.

Well, having too many toys is very rare! Its near impossible!

I love buying toys this way! They are cheaper than in the store.

I saw these stackable colored round things and thought they would be fun. Just $2.

But then I figured they would just collect dust so I walked away.

Then at the last minute I couldn't resist!

I had to have them.

Mason has been loving them ever since I got them home!

He's played peek-a-boo with them and tried stacking them.

The older kids realized that if you take 2 of them

they can click together to make a ball!

They are even Fisher Price! Each one has a number on it (1-10).

(I think I did really well at this sale.... 2 kids purses, the stackable toy, 3 puzzles, and a book for $8.50)

I know some of you are not real conserned about my deals. The real purpose of this post was to show how cute my little Mason is!

One more complete

You might remember me showing you a picture of this door. Now you get to see what we did to it!

Behind the door there are all these steps. We didn't want to completely leave the space open but wanted it to feel more open. I am not a big fan of baby gates because they are always in the way when you need to get threw. Also some kids like to try and climb them.

Our first idea was a french door of some kind. Wow, have you ever seen the prices of those? Not what I wanted to spend. So then we looked at buying a half door. Well a half door was still kind of spendy.

So Danny cut the door in half! Then I sanded it! Yes, I did a great job! Then Danny painted it.

Danny also added a small peice of trim board to the top of the door to give it a finished look.

So we probably only spent about $5.00 on this project. We had left over paint to use.

Much better than spending $380 on a french door. Oh and to be honest I think a french door might have looked to fancy for my house!

One more project complete..... too many more to go!

What happen to my street?

To add to my overwelming week last week we have also been listening to road work. They have been at this for a few weeks now and have our street tore up. Some of the sidewalks are also gone. Its been loud!

After they removed the tar they came and packed down the dirt. They went up and down the street too many times to count. Our whole house shook! I even had a few toys fall off their shelves and a picture fall off the wall from the impact. It was crazy. The kids of course loved it.

Today I came walking into the living room at 6:30AM to find a man standing outside looking around. Thankfully I was dressed! They've been out there working ever since.

Things were alittle overwelming last week. Lots of kids running threw the house each day and my little Maddi has sure been giving me a work out.

I am hoping to start things off this week alittle bit smoother! Going into the week with a positive attitude!

I think we've been working on too many house projects as well. Now our stove door broke. We've had the stove 2 years and got it used when we moved into this house. So not sure its worth spending alot to fix it. So now we'll have to keep an eye out of some sales. Its been fixed for now but won't last too long. I'm not sure how old it is but I do know some burners were already replaced.

Just seems that a person never gets ahead. If its not one thing its another.

I did get a chance to have a much needed 2 hours to myself Friday night! Even if I went grocery shopping and ran a few errands it was needed. I always feel guilty leaving all the kids with Danny but sometimes even us mothers need a break. By no means am I perfect and I knew with Danny having to work Saturday I needed alittle time. So grocery shopping it was! I went to Kohl's too and of course bought things for the kids!

Saturday was a nice day. The kids and I got up and went to a few garage sales. Not very good sales this Saturday. Mostly clothes that were very worn out. I did happen to find a child's workbench for $5 that I bought for our basement play area. Then we headed to Grandma Robin's Cafe for lunch!

My sister and I went to a a furniture store to look around while Grandma kept all the kids but Mason. We took him with. It was nice to get out of the house after a long week.

Just hoping for a better week this week. My daycare licensor comes Tuesday to re-license me (done every other summer). I know it will go just fine but of course I am still nervous.

4 happy kids!

Its hard to get all 4 of the kids looking at the camera at one time and smiling.

I like how Mason looks like he is laughing at Maddison in this one.

Maddison had enough and she was taking off!

This was actually the first one I took. I think it turned out the best.