Attempt at a homemaker

I try my best at the stay-at-home mom/homemaker bit.  I have good days and bad days.  I clip coupons to save us money, try to keep my house clean, keep up with the never-ending piles of laundry, and try to love on my children in between all the craziness that happens in life.  I feel like for the most part I get a gold star.  My kids are fed, clothed and happy.  That's all that matters, right?  I found this on Pinterest and thought that it needed to be on a big sign on my ceiling so I could see it every morning when I wake up.

Maybe then I wouldn't worry so much about the little things.  Life is short, right? :)

I also found something else on Pinterest that I thought I would give a try this year.  The past couple of years, we've taken the kids to pick apples at a nearby orchard.  We come home with so many yummy apples and after the first few the excitement over the apples starts to dwindle.  I was thinking about trying to make my own applesauce and found a recipe to make it in a crock pot.  Sounded pretty easy, so I decided to try it.  

Sydney and I went to the orchard and pick a bunch of apples.  I'm thankful we went when we did because the lack of rain this summer made all the apples have a short life span.  They were ready to pick a lot early that normal.  The man let me know that the next week would probably be the last week to get anything good.  

We picked some nice Jonathan apples which happened to be the best apples for applesauce. :)

I spent my "my time" while Sydney was taking her afternoon nap, peeling and chopping apples to add to the crock pot.  With a little brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and some love from the crock pot, we eventually had something to work with.

I mashed up what was in the crock pot with a potato masher and put it in the blender until it was the right consistency.  It turned out tasting like apple pie filling!  Delicious!

Did that make me super mom?  No, but it was fun to know I could make it myself and it not taste gross! :)  On a side note, this jar didn't last long. ;)

Life is crazy

Holy moley!  Where did September go??  I apologize that I haven't blogged in a while.  Life is a little crazy with two little ones, but that's no excuse, right? ;)  I will try my best to keep at it.

Braydon is having to do some traveling for work, so I've been a little busy keeping the household running.  My mom actually came to visit to help me with the kids while he was gone last week.  It was SO nice to have the help as well as the company!  I love my kids, but every mom understands that they aren't the best conversationalists. There's only so many times you can talk about they're favorite TV show or they're favorite thing before you start to get a little bored.  So it was nice to have her around.

Apparently, Nonna was missed by everyone...including the cat. :)

It just so happened that her birthday also fell in the middle of this visit.  I won't mention numbers, mom, so don't worry. ;) hehe  I haven't gotten to spend a birthday with my mom in a while, so I was so grateful to have her all to myself on her special day.  I tried to make it as special as I could as we kept up with all the other things going on in our day.  We got a delicious pizza at Papa Murphy's and a frozen custard cake from Culver's.  We ended up doing the cake by ourselves that night because we were so busy trying to get the kids in bed on time!  It ended up being really nice because I got to sing happy birthday to my wonderful mom all by myself. :)

A big thank you to my mom for all of her love and help while she was here.  She's a pretty amazing mom and I love her dearly. :)