My Family Loves It

My little fish are freezing now when they swim and its still August! They still go in at least once a day but they start to turn blue and have to come out much earlier than they would like. It makes me sad that summer is ending and school starting next week. The boys have really taken to swimming this summer and amaze me with how well they’re doing. John showed Ethan the backstroke on Sunday and he is getting good at it. They’re both turning into great underwater swimmers and dive down to get toys off the bottom of the pool all the time. We got some neat dive balls (and other fun swim things we’ll have to do a blog post about next spring) and Ethan now holds his breath to see how many he can get in one dive. Its making me wish John and I had bought that house we looked at around the corner with the indoor pool instead of this one (I guess we would have needed to come up with at least $20,000 more and it would have cost a ton to heat that pool/house in winter)! Oh well! I tried getting Ethan excited about the hockey rink John will build again this winter but that wasn’t helping cheer him up about our dwindling pool time this year!

My kids are really drawn to “kids” yogurt, they like the little designs on the cups, they like the size of the cups but mainly they like the actual yogurt in them. Since the kids can eat a lot of yogurt, I had decided last winter to make my own and bought a yogurt maker. Unfortunately the kids didn’t catch on like I had hoped and I haven’t used it in forever now (I personally like how it came out but the kids stopped eating it and said it wasn’t as good). So it was back to buying them yogurt! Yogurt is like a treat to them, they love it like its dessert and don’t get sick of it. I can give them a lot of yogurt in place of less healthy snacks and its a win win situation. When the Parent Bloggers Network sponsored a Yoplait yogurt review I had to say yes since its something I already knew the kids loved!

Yoplait offers some great yogurt options for kids and I love that Yoplait Kids has 25% less sugar than other kids yogurts. Yoplait kids has DHA now and of course calcium. Its also available as a yogurt drink and my kids LOVE those. I have to hide them in the fridge so that they last more than a day, even Jamie searches the fridge for them and has helped herself a few times. I have found the yogurt drinks along with a cup of dry cereal are the perfect “eat in the car breakfast” for when we are having one of those hectic mornings and are running late. The only Yoplait product that I try to stay away from is the Trix yogurt, it is too brightly colored and does have more sugar than the other Yoplait Kids (of course its still yogurt so its a good option for people who have very picky kids that might need extra enticing to eat yogurt).

With Ethan starting kindergarten next week I have to get more organized and plan out his lunches and snacks ahead of time. I think I’ll rely on yogurt a lot when I’m packing his lunches, I really want to send him with things he likes but that aren’t junk food! He has an insulated lunch bag but I think I’ll put the yogurts in the freezer first thing in the morning so that I’m sure they stay cold.

* Visit Yoplait’s website here and download a coupon for $1.50 off!

WHAT YOU CAN WIN: I have a Yoplait cooler bag and a coupon for one free kids product to give away to a lucky reader! Not a huge prize but one I’m sure most of you would use! To enter leave me a comment letting me know what healthy snacks and lunches you send your kids to school with (or pack with you when you take them out for the day). I need some new ideas in addition to yogurt before my pickiest kid starts Kindergarten!!! Contest ends Friday Sept 5th and is open to US mailing addresses only.

I had my 30 week baby appointment today and it was my first time seeing the OB-GYN this pregnancy. I see the nurse mid-wife for most of my pregnancy each time and then since having the c-sections I switch to the doctor for a few visits and delivery. The arrangement works out great and I LOVE both of them even though they are so different. Seeing my midwife is generally much easier, with less waiting and more chit chatting. The great thing about seeing my doctor today is that we got to talk about setting a date to have the baby and he is so relaxed and calm that its just nice seeing him now and then anyway. My due date is Halloween and he is going to try to get the delivery scheduled for October 24th. With this pregnancy I really wanted to make sure I got the earliest date so that I’d be able to go trick or treating with the kids still and so that the baby will have more space between her birthday and Halloween every year. My babies are so big (10-4, 9-10 & 9-7) that actually this isn’t any earlier than we’d normally schedule and is just a week before my due date but I figure every day counts so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll hear in a day or two that we’re on for 10/24/08!

Ethan and Ben both had their last YMCA soccer yesterday. It was hot out but somehow it was one of their best days at soccer. Next summer Jamie can play and we’ll have one kid in each age group (fortunately they all meet at the same time and place). I lucked out and got quite a few good pictures of the boys and their friends AND a few cute ones of all 3 of our kids (of course I had to include some pretty silly pictures too)!

This week’s blog blast is sponsored by Hanes (I was lucky enough to review some of their great kids socks and underwear earlier in the month) and the Parent Bloggers Network and its on The First Day of School. Its obviously fitting for lots of people this time of year but especially me since I’m sort of half excited and half dreading the start of the school year right now!

Ethan will be starting K and I am nervous that he might not like it at first and I fear its a big change that I’ll then follow up with adding another sibling to his life the month after! He went to orientation on Wed for 2 1/2 hours without us and it went well. He has one friend in the same class and so that is a great thing. I am having a tougher time with it than he is but I still worry that he might come home that first day and say he hates it! His school is just finishing up a huge new playground that will be open for the start of school and that has been fun for him to watch. He seems fine with it when I bring K up (but I try not to talk about it too much so I don’t freak him out or annoy him). He got a letter in the mail from his teacher but we won’t meet her until the night before school starts. I am making John take the day off so that he can go with me to drive Ethan on the first day. He can be the calm one while I can try not to cry too much and take a few pictures.To make the day a bit special I plan to take Ethan’s picture holding a sign that says “my first day of kindergarten”, I already have some cookie dough frozen for him to have as his snack with lunch and we’ll probably go to Friendly’s for dinner that night. I know Ethan and I will adjust to school and by the time Ben starts K in another year I’ll be a pro at it (and Ben loves school so I won’t have as many fears for him) BUT until we get past that first day, week, month of school I will be a bit on edge worrying. I also will be a mess waiting for the bus in the afternoon that first day! I really didn’t want to have him ride the bus at all but picking him up in the afternoon would be too hard with Jamie (and soon the new baby) napping when school gets out. Plus I am driving him at 8:30, then Ben to preschool at 9 and then I pick Ben up at 11:30 so that is enough in and out of the car time with the kids 5 days a week for me already. Can you tell I am a mess! Come Thursday September 5th life will change a lot around here and I wish summer could last longer to delay that first day of school!

*Stay tuned to find out how the start of the year goes and hopefully I can post about how silly I was to worry so much! Oh and I can’t post without a picture (okay so I came back already and added 3 at the top of the post) so here is Ethan on his first day of preschool 2 years ago, I was a mess before that day too but it all worked out well!

After having problems with our permalinks when we upgraded to Wordpress 2.6, I have been waiting anxiously for 2.6.1.  The wait is over, the site is upgraded, and so far everything is working well.

I also decided to upgrade one of my favorites plugins, cforms.  This plugin allows me to create custom forms, like our Contact Us and Comment forms, but I’ve had problems in the past with the Ajax.  This upgrade was no different and the forms broke, but I have been unable to get them working again.  To get around the problem I turned the Ajax off and am using their simple version of the form and that seems to work.

If you hit any problems please let us know

ContactUs@myfamilylovesit.com

Sometimes there is nothing that inspires me to write a post and other days I keep thinking that every little thing we do needs to be mentioned on here! Yesterday I had so many ideas but I had already posted a review and it was a busy day so I held off. Lets see if I remember anything!

• Ben was in the pool swimming away and rescuing Japanese Beetles yesterday and he made up a cute song “Japaneetles, Japaneetles you’re my favorite kind of bug…..” but I forget the rest. Yes both boys call them Japaneetles and I never correct them because its cute. I had been shaking the branches of our Chestnut tree that gets ravaged every year by them so that they would fall and the chickens would eat them (really worked) and I (who tells the boys not to squish any bugs) had been killing them with my shoes. So I stopped the war on beetles weeks ago after the boys started rescuing them from drowning in the pool and collecting beetle families and playing with them until they flew away. The tree looks brown and ugly but the boys don’t notice!
• I made some pancakes with old bisquick and they turned out rather yucky so we fed them to the chickens the other day and I actually got some pictures of all 7 of them together (harder than posing the 3 kids) next I’ll have to work on getting pictures that aren’t fuzzy.
• Jamie has been teething with molars and has been having a super cranky week but she manages to still be cute! She has been saying something that I wanted to mention and now I forget, guess I should make notes in the future!
• Ethan and Ben started football this week and wow was their coach a space cadet! Luckily my friend’s husband is stepping in to “help” him and really running things now because the first practice made me insane! They meet 3 times a week and the boys are excited, especially Ben.
• Ethan missed football last night because he had his first run in with our driveway. He is a bit of a daredevil but he managed to fall off his razor big wheel while doing one of his spin outs and he wasn’t wearing a shirt so he got VERY scraped up. He also got a golf ball sized bump on his head. I was glad he didn’t want to play football after that because it would have hurt.
• We have lots of pumpkins in our garden this year so we checked those out the other day and then the kids picked all of the carrots. They didn’t get big but it was our first attempt at them and I’m just glad Ethan was happy with them since its all he wanted to grow. I washed them and left a short handle of stems and they ate them dipped in ranch dressing.
• Oh well I forget whatever else I thought was so great to blog about! Maybe I’ll think of it later and tack it on!
• Oh I remembered one thing, Jamie is STILL talking DAILY about how “the bee hurt my belly” and its been over 2 weeks now. Its the first thing she says if she talks to anyone on the phone and I am wondering when it will stop but there hasn’t been a day since she got stung that she hasn’t mentioned it at least once (today it was twice so far). I keep responding “yes but you’re okay and the bee went bye bye” but its not working!

Jamie loves shoes (and I mention that a lot probably) but she also has a thing for socks and who could blame her when she has two sets of adorable Little Miss Matched socks (see the first 2 pictures below)! She received her socks as gifts from two different people and I had never heard of them prior to her first set. I’m not calling them “pairs” because they very cleverly come in sets of three “mismatched” but coordinating fun socks. I love the idea and kept hoping to find them out shopping but unfortunately I have yet to see them in any store near us.  I recently went online and found the Little Miss Matched website and was so excited to find that they make a lot more than just socks! They were kind enough to let me review a pair of pajamas for Jamie and they even threw in a cute mini sock change purse for me (or at least I’m pretending it was meant for me)!

*Just found out they recently started to carry Little Miss Matched at Macy’s!

The pajamas came packaged in a fun little box that makes it perfect for gifting so I had to take a picture! When we opened them they were adorable, the pants are striped with bright colors and the top is polka dotted with flowers and then has the same stripes for the sleeves. Jamie looks so cute in them that I took her out with me to dinner wearing them and she got a lot of compliments (it was also handy since we got home late and she was all ready for bed). The PJs we got conveniently “go” with but don’t “match” her sock sets so its too cute to save the combo just for bedtime. In my opinion a 2 year old can get away with PJs anytime of day so for late nights out this is Jamie’s new outfit! Jamie just turned 2 and isn’t a chunky kid (she is tall though), she normally wears a 2T but these PJs are a 3-4T and I think they are the ideal size for her now and she has room to grow. I always buy any brand of cotton PJs a size or TWO larger than the kids wear normally because sleepwear has to be cut snug fitting for fire safety purposes. So my take on these PJs is that they are unique and fun and the PERFECT present for any little girl. Oh and they have them in big girl and adult sizes too (although I’d like to see adults sizes larger than a L, XL isn’t too much to ask for is it, maybe even an XXL please?).

The change purse is also a terrific gift idea for moms like me or school aged kids who need to bring lunch money but don’t need to carry a wallet to the cafeteria. The little sock shaped change purses come in a variety of prints and are double woven so they are strong enough to hold a lot of change without stretching out. I love mine because its cute (obviously) but also because Jamie can’t figure out how to open it and now when she goes in my bag she can’t dump my change anymore!

You can get 10% off your order of Little Miss Matched products by entering the code MYFAM10 but HURRY the offer ends 8/31! Go look, they have such a huge range of fun things from bedding sets to skateboards to socks for the whole family!

I haven’t posted about my chickens in quite a while and they are turning into characters! I let them have free run of the yard now when we’re home and they are fun to watch. Today I finally finished painting their coop that John built (and will blog with the plans once he shingles the roof and its 100% done). It looks pretty good but we still plan to add some painted chickens on it for decoration! I discovered that Loretta is a pest, she kept sneaking up behind me and pecking at me while I was painting (luckily I managed not to fall over when she got me in the butt while I was leaning down to paint the trim). Thats her in the top picture, isn’t she cute! Here are a few more pictures, I am hoping they are full sized now but they aren’t laying eggs yet and still need to grow their combs. I can’t wait for eggs, I’m thinking another month at most.

After staying up past 1AM to watch the Olympics I was not thrilled to say the least to wake at 7:30 to a living room carpet COVERED in dog poop! I know which dog it was because Casey is a walk while she poops kind of dog and so she really spread things out. To make it worse John took the boys back to the lake with my brother for a “boys weekend” so he wasn’t here to help (ie: clean it up all himself). I am pretty sure I know why Casey did it though, there was someone nearby setting off a lot of fireworks last night and it freaked her out so even though she went out twice before bed, she must have been too scared to go. When I was VERY pregnant with Jamie (as opposed to the 29 weeks I am currently) and John was at work I had a fun-filled day of both dogs being sick all over the carpet throughout the house so I guess it could have been much worse.

Yes, this is a gross post not fitting with the “my family loves it” theme of our blog but cut me a little slack. I could have gone into much more detail so I spared you a little! Anyway I’ll end on a nice note, just look at what a wonderful cute dog she is letting Jamie play cowboy with her (back in December) so I can’t stay upset with her!