so much goings on....

As my sis-in-law stated in her blog, where has April gone???  Seriously, it just came and went so quickly. We have been having some crazy Spring Colorado weather lately...one minute it will be sunny, warm, next it's raining, thundering, lightning, hailing....then it all goes to snow. Not to mention the occasional tornado warning. Mind you this is all happening in a span of 48 hrs. I told you it was crazy.

Crazy hailstorm, looks like snow

This happened shortly after i took the pictures of my tulips from the previous post, some of them were destroyed

Last week Paul was able to take Ian to work for "bring your kid to work day" sadly, for some reason, at the last minute they canceled it at Paul's facility, but they were able to go down the road to the other Lockheed facility. Ian was beyond excited...he woke up early, got dressed, brushed his teeth, hair...if only he would do this when we go to church.

My boys going off to work

Megan needing to get in the picture too

I was surprised that Megan didn't really put up a fuss, usually if brother does something she needs to do it too. But we stayed home and had a princess movie day.  I was really missing Ian, but soon noticed that 1. it was quiet 2. i wasn't disciplining anyone 3. Megan was really agreeable.  Don't get me wrong, the kids do love each other, but they are siblings and they do fight.

It was going great until the weather turned and we got a tornado warning for our area...i know that the likelihood of it hitting us would be small, but do i really want to take a chance with our precious cargo taking her nap upstairs...NOPE. and why do they always hit at nap time???  She was good with going down to the basement with the cat and mommy. In retrospect, nothing happened, so we could have just stayed put. 
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Next bit of fun stuff is Ian's kindergarten orientation. That was done this past Monday...we got to meet the teachers and support staff, principal and tour the school.  Apparently they are doing something different this year. All kindergarten students will be morning class, they will be using 3 different rooms, which will be segregated into subjects. so if they need to leave items relating to math out, they can.  and they will be separating the kids into levels of knowledge...if one kid knows all of their letters and can read they'll be with kids like him or her, or if they need a little more time on a subject they'll be with a different group...and it is dynamic. if all the sudden their needs change they change groups.  It seems more individualized. the teachers are totally happy about this.
Ian will have a week rotation of PE, Art and Music...20 minutes a day.  I think it's good that they will be well rounded. Ian is totally excited about going to school. 

spring time flowers

Just this morning, i looked out to see what kind of day it was going to be....and i found my tulips started to open up...

Crazy stamen

Touching Tulips... I have a framed picture, now in Megan's room that was called that, but it had 2 pink Tulips, but very similar in concept

not sure what these blue guys are called...it was a mixed pack from Costco a year ago. but they are pretty, and sadly i think these are the only ones in this whole area that come up, i had help planting them so....who knows what happens

being thrifty

Recently, it got in my mind to try to save a little money and try to make my own laundry detergent.  I actually heard about this idea from a friend of mine, but i dismissed it because i didn't really know what was involved and one of the ingredients was somewhat foreign to me (the elusive Washing Soda). But a few weeks ago as i was jumping around on the net...okay, i'll let it out, I was on the Duggar's website, looking at their recipes. And one of them was laundry detergent.

i thought, hey why not try to save some money and try this out.  The first obstacle was getting all the ingredients.  There are very few ingredients really, Borax, Washing Soda (as mentioned above, i'll get to that later), some sort of bar soap, like Fels Naptha or Zote...(i remember trying to hunt those puppies down when Paul was being deployed overseas.  After he left, i saw them everywhere...now when i wanted them, do you think i could find them easily???? NOPE) water and a 5 gallon bucket, if you want to make liquid soap.

Okay back to that darn Washing Soda...or Arm and Hammer's Super Washing Soda....not to be confused with baking soda.   I think there is a chemical reaction involved or something crazy like that to make the difference.

The process is really easy:

Step 1-grate the bar soap, and melt in 4 cups of water in a large pot over medium heat

Step 2-fill bucket with hot water, pour in melted soap, 1 cup Washing Soda and 1/2 cup Borax, stir

Step 3-cover and let it sit over night, it will become gelatinous, stir that...

pour into halfway into a clean container then, fill the rest of that with water...shake every time you use it.

Cost cut down

1 bar Fels Naptha-$1.29

Borax-$4.99 (i'm sure it is cheaper everywhere else but here in Highlands Ranch)

Arm &Hammer's Super Washing Soda (found in our local ACE) $3.99

5 gallon bucket from HomeDepot $2.34

lid to said bucket $0.98

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total spent $10.27(excluding the bucket and lid)

the recipe i used above makes 10 gallons...we usually spend over $10 for Kirkland brand detergent that comes in a 1.32 Gallon container....

Not sure if this will be a long term deal, but with Megan's sensitive skin and her eczema it is worth a try, plus all of those cleaners i bought work awesome throughout the house, so no real loss.

This is what it looks like after all the ingredients are added, if you use Zote, it will be a pretty pink. You can add essential oils to make it smell good, but i like the "Clean" scent of Fels Faptha

I should add that it is a low sudsy detergent, which would work great in my mom's super efficiency washer, it is really picky about how much soap you add

I hear the washer stop...we'll see how it turned out

littleton museum

During the weekend we went to the Littleton Museum, which had 2 different farms, a 1860 one and a 1890 one. Plenty of animals to see and tons of buildings to explore. And it was all FREE

Yay who doesn't love giant flowers??

Family pictures *sigh* always someone who won't look at the camera.

Just hanging out on the farm with the fam

I told the kids this was the outhouse, not sure they understood that "olden times" they didn't have bathrooms in the house

This is the 1860's farm house...totally "little house on the prairie"

Where is Ma, Pa, Laura, Mary and baby Carrie???

Tiny stairs that led up to the bedrooms.  Do you see the gap between the stairs?? I was totally freaking out

One of the upstairs bedrooms

basket full of kitty

One of the "pioneer women" they had working the farm...oddly enough i didn't see one guy.

This one preferred to "dance" along the way instead if sit in the stroller.

Spring time is happening all around us

Saying "moo" to the cow

Inside the 1890 house...i could live in this one...but where do i plug in my laptop???

Well stocked pantry...i think i've seen some of these things in my grandma's house

a simple place setting...it looked like a family heirloom i've seen in the past

I get a kick out of the ice signs...for some reason.

Ian had gotten into a coal bin and his hands were black...luckily we had some handy wipes, or else i told him we would put him in the tub

Such pretty flowers were just starting to bloom.

when weeds are just too pretty

a few days ago, we were enjoying being outdoors after it seemed like a long cold winter. Megan comes up to me and gives me this...a pretty flower. knowing we don't have much of pretty flowers we have planted ourselves in our yard, i asked her where she found this...she leads me to the area next to their play structure.

It occurred to me that sometimes the label "weed" is just too harsh for something this pretty.

Here are a few of my boy...i don't get too many of him since he is always on the go or making silly faces...these turned out rather good.

such a sweet boy

a new season... a new blog

Okay, i'm becoming a blog whore...this is going to be my 3rd blog. first it was Xanga, that was good for a few years, until the limit on photos drove me nuts, then Shutterfly, which i liked for the unlimited photos, but i didn't like the layout....now i'm hoping this will be the best of both worlds...we'll see. One good thing is that you can post this from FB, which everyone is on these days. Another good thing is that you can upload pictures straight from Picasa.