Fluffy Sea Turtles Drinking Roast Beef

I have done it. Project kitchen is done. YAY! Let me explain. When we moved in, our house is significantly bigger than our old house. We need new furniture (and by new, I dont mean we need to REPLACE anything, we need MORE of it!), there are blank walls everywhere....But we're a single income household, there's only so much we can do if we don't want our credit card to max out. So here's the deal. Every paycheck (bi-monthly), I get $200 to give an area of the house a facelift. Now that we got moved in and I got BASIC things done (window trimmings), I have a better idea of what I want for each room. KEEPING IN MIND: This is BASE HOUSING. We can't paint (I think we CAN, but we have to unpaint it when we move out and since we're not staying more than a few years, it's not worth it to us), and we can't remodle. First area on my list? The KITCHEN!

Here is it before we moved in.

Now here it is after we moved in.

And here it is with the face lift.

Here is the wall facing the ocean Before

And After.

And the pantry wall Before

And After.

Just for funsies...here's before moving in, and after it's done.

The crafts included in this room were the FAMILY sign and the valance made from curtains from the other house. Total spent was $138. I can live with that. If I get each area done under $200, I get my living room furniture faster. YAY!

Next? Dining room/ laundry room/ staircase.

Smuggle Muffin Goob Toob.

Ode To Caleb

My little Caleb is cute.
He is a crazy monster.
He loves patty cake.

He is very outgoing.
He loves to giggle and play.
He loves peek a boo.





One day he started singing.
It wasn't very pretty.
He breathes in to sing.

I love this baby boy.

Even when big sister puts bows on his head.

Humpty Dumpty Eats Cats. True Story.

Happy Easter, people!! We've had the best time here in just this one month. We love our new neighborhood, and EVERYONE is always outside playing which is completely opposite of Yuma because of the over 100 degree weather (and the fact that we lived in a retirement area of the city).

Anyways, yesterday our neighbor Charlie came over to help Greg with his car. Charlie told me all the kids and wives will be outside soon to play, so I got the kids all dressed and such and went outside to socialize with my neighbors. A few hours later I found myself sitting around a table with six women talking and such and a scene from desperate housewives and/or army wives came to my mind. It was nice to actually have friends who live so close and you're still close enough to home that you dont have to plan everything (baby food, Celeste's meals, etc.) We decided to have a BBQ that night.

Have I ever mentioned I'm a huge show off? I made my super awesome spinache dip that I found on the internet then modified to taste and EV-ER-Y one was going crazy about it. 

I'm also pretty sure I mentioned how much I love our neighborhood because everyone is always running around playing, tons of kids all down the street.

That's how it looks every day after 3:30pm. Pretty fantastic, really. Then it was time for the EASTER EGG HUNT!! Yaaaay! The bigger kids wanted to wait till after dark so they could so a flashlight hunt, so we separated the school age kids from little kids and had the little ones go during the day.

It was really nice seeing Celeste finally have real friends. It was also very funny cause on of the six year old boys, watching all the little ones take a picture, pointed at Celeste and told his friend, "She's so cute." Ooh my.

So we let the kids loose in the back yard across the street.

In the middle of it all, Celeste said, "my bag is too heavy.." and the next thing I knw she was surrounded by three of the older boys holding her bag and helping her pick up eggs.

I'm going to tell Greg it's time to polish his shotgun and hang it on the living room wall now.

Soon after that, Caleb decided it was time for him to go to bed, so I took him home while Celeste played with the older kids with Daddy, who was helping a small group play fliashlight tag after the big kid egg hunt.

This morning we discovered th EASTER BUNNY CAME!!

Caleb got a toy phone,

and Celeste got a beautiful cross necklace...her first one.

We all got ourselves dressed up and polished and went down to the club for some Easter Morning Brunch. The Easter bunny was there, and they did an egg hun after our delicious breakfast.

Greg and I thought the bunny looked funny, like he's running away from Greg and his gun, screaming.



It was a pretty good day, and we'll probably have ANOTHER family egg hunt after nap time.

*On a side note, I now associate Easter with my Dad's death. Last year the night before Easter, instead of putting out baskets and telling stories to my child, I was sobbing on the couch far away from my home. Instead of celebrating the beauty of life and rebirth, I was mourning. It was snowy and cold and horrible. This year still brought a pain in my heart, but I was able to be with my wonderful family and celebrate the life of Jeus Christ, and be with my family. I will always miss my dad.

Purple People Eaters Coming to Town The Day Before Tomorrow

So this week has been a delight. Greg worked all weekend and on his day off (Monday) he slept all day because he only got about two hours of sleep that night total while on duty. I went to get groceries and while I was bringing in ten bags at a time, my shoe caught on the safety gate and I took a pretty good spill, landing squarely on my right knee. LUCKILY.....even though there was food everywhere, I landed on linolium, and the gate fell on me too, THIS knee injury did NOT require any medical attention. Greg pulled my knee in a few different directions to see if there was any ligament damage, but I got lucky with just a knarly bruise on the top of my knee. I've been easing back into my workouts since then, instead of doing zumba I took the kids on a walk in the stroller up and down hills. I ran last night, and the injury seems just fine.

Tuesday Caleb had a doctor appointment and amazed everyone by his new trick....singing while breathing in. He imitated everything we do, and I always try to make funny voices because he laughs and laughs at them, and one of my funny voices is talking while breathing in....and one day I was talking to him in that funny voice and he just started making wheezing noises! I was alarmed for a few minutes, till I realized they were intentional and he was trying to make the funny voice!! He is now a pro at it, and will prompty make his funny voice whenever prompted. The nursing staff thought he was a hoot. The doctor thought he was amazing. That's my boy!

Yesterday morning, I woke up to the sound of Celeste's toy vacuum. I got up about five minutes later and was walking downstairs, when Celeste started walking upstairs with the vacuum in hand. She greeted me with, "Oh hi mom! I've been bacuuming for TWO HOURS!! I've been eating ALL the footprints! Now I'm gonna bacuum upstairs now."

We decorated Easter eggs last night. It was pretty fun, I put Caleb down for bed so we wouldn't have to worry about him getting all egg curious.

Aren't they just glorious?

Last night, Greg went to bed a few minutes earlier than me, and when I went to bed, there was Calebs BB Gun on my side of the bed. Greg started giggling and said, "Shelley, I would appreciate it if you didn't leave your gun in bed." I replied, "Well I would appreciate it if you didn't leave cats under your pillow." Slowly, he reached under his pillow and sure enough, there was a beanie baby cat under there!! What?! How?! Well, I had Celeste lay down in our room for nap time because she usually lays down in the spare room so she doesn't wake up Caleb, but I needed the spare room for crafting and I noticed she left a cat under the pillow. Mwahaha. I couldn't have planned it better myself. Score one for Shelley.

Family Date Night Rocks My World

Tonight we decided since Greg had to work today and has duty tomorrow (8am-8am Monday), we'll go to the beach and sit in the truck's bed and have a tailgate picnic on the beach. So we got some burritos, parked the truck so the tailgate was facing the water, snuggled together and ate burritos (and apparently Celeste doesn't know how to eat burritos, so we had to show her how). Then we went to the water and Celeste and I played around for a while (cause Greg had on his shoes and Caleb didn't really like the water much).

It was super duper awesome until we piled back in the truck and Greg got a call that Jack ran away and a lady in the neighborhood found him. Now we just need to figure out whats wrong with our electronic fence. Hmm.

Week of Fun

Ok, I know I've been remiss at writing for the past week. Truth is, nothing super exciting has gone on, and I'm sure you don't want to hear about how much I worked out or how many calories I've burned, or what I ate this week.

So here are a few highlights this week.

Caleb has been even more adamant about standing up. He will climb up on anything he can...couches and chairs...

His big sister...ESPECIALLY his big sister, who stands there and takes it and giggles that her baby brother is climbing up her..



Of course, it would be terrible if I didn't post pictures of his face when he contentrated super hard...

Also he's been doing this thing with his head, where he tilts it to the side for a few seconds, and if you copy it, he'll start laughing and do it again and again.

Of course, he's beginning to make messes everywhere too. How can one little boy make such a big mess?

And lastly, he found some kennel corn today. Oooh boy oh boy boy boy.

I know it seems like it's all about Caleb this week, but he's sooooo curious and exploring EVERYTHING right now. Poor Celeste is always having to clean up the letter magnets and having baby brother climb up her, she is such a good sport about it. I feel so blessed to have two amazing babies!!!

OF COURSE.............this week was GREGS BIRTHDAY!!!! HAPPY (3 years before you turn) 30!!!! YAAAY!!! haha I got him a creepy stool thing (he wanted it, trust me) and Celeste got him a shop vac, and my mom got him an amazon gift card, so I've been seeing things like ammo cans and pull up bars on amazon left on my computer for the past few days. His dessert of choice? Apple pie. Happy birthday daddy, your family LOVES you!!