Me. Today.

ME *today*

1. Stressed-out over things that are beyond my control. Like the rest of the U.S. population, I suppose.

2. Spending lots of time with the triplets lately, since they’re off-track from school the entire month of March.

3. Working through the clutter in our home. It’s amazing home much stuff a family can accumulate with 5 daughters!

4. Still on a “Disney High” after spending two days at Disneyland & California Adventure last week.

5. Haven’t had a single migraine since my Arizona Getaway to visit my parents… Mini-vacations are definitely good for me. That’s proof.

6. It’s making me feel so happy to have my home as tidy as it is right now… Now, how do I keep it this way without evicting my children? (joke)

7. Eating lots of candy the past few days. Is it my comfort food?

8. Hopeful that Spring will bring good news along with it…

so very proud today.

Academic Excellence Awards from Christine Arrocena on Vimeo.


I was just gushing with pride over my triplets today...

:)

(Don't forget to disable the music player at the very bottom of this page so you can hear the sound on this video! Just press PAUSE...)

babies and chilies.

So... I just popped dinner into the oven. About 20 more minutes and we'll be eating GOOD. Mmmm.

I decided to blog about dinner (or some aspect of it) while chopping up green bell pepper just a bit ago. I was shaking my head at myself because I was trying to chop up the bell pepper so very tiny. I mean really tiny. Ridiculously tiny. The reason I do this is below.



This is my daughter, Kaia. She's the cleverest little 5-year old girl you will ever know. Believe me. (BTW, she's one of three... the middle girl of my triplets.) And she tells me the most thought-provoking things... more on that later. But a while back, I served her dinner that included the yummiest bits of sautéed green bell pepper, which is one of my favorite veggies of all.

She REFUSED to eat it. I explained to her that the taste was sweet-like, not yucky. She shook her head at me and said so matter-of-factly, "You know, Mommy... Mommies really shouldn't feed their babies CHILIES. It's not a very kind thing to do."



Whaaaat?

So, since then, I've had to chop up bell pepper as small as I possibly can. Seriously. In the hopes that she will not notice it in her food, of course. No matter how good the food tastes, if she knows what those "little green things" are... it is all over. She will go to bed hungry if she thinks they are chilies. I have to tell her that they are something else... something like, "green healthy vegetables that help you grow strong!" Seems to do the trick, and she just gobbles it down.



So this was what was on my cutting board tonight. Practically PUREED bell pepper! It was pulverized. I really should have just put it in my blender instead of exerting all that energy! I just kept chopping and chopping and chopping, getting it as small as I could. Then it occurred to me that it was soooo silly. But necessary, at least for a while. I'm hoping that she'll grow out of this way of thinking very soon. But for now, a Mommy certainly cannot feed her baby chilies. It just isn't a KIND thing to do.

{BTW, I made Baked Spaghetti for dinner tonight... If I have time to post the recipe tomorrow, I will...} :)

Catch-up.

I completely forgot to share what I had whipped-up to celebrate the new President on Inauguration Day (January 20th)... {Remember, I said I was going to show you LATER that night? whoops!}

Now... I adore cupcakes; both baking them and eating them! So here was my little red, white and blue edible celebration:




Mmmmm... Devils Food with Cream Cheese frosting! We all devoured them after dinner that day!And speaking of cupcakes, and my adoration of them... you know I had to whip some up for Valentine's Day, too! Look...

Red Velvet with a simple chocolate frosting! Heaven!Here are a few more pics from that night... we had a Chocolate Party!







Wish you could have been there, too! LOL




...now just one more thing...



The day after all this fun, I woke up bright and early and went with my good friend, Melissa, to the Orange County Scrapbook Expo. Oh my! Look at the loot that I came home with! Can't wait to dig in, I just haven't had the time yet!

Project 365 update + more.

It has come to my attention that I have not blogged in FOR-EV-ER (it's been more than a month, I think) so here I am. Sometimes I wonder if anyone will even notice, but then out of the blue, someone will ask me to update it. That's so nice... and it gives me the motivation to write another blog post!!! So here I am!


Project 365. Okay, so... it didn't work for me. I wasn't lucky enough to get a kit... Creating Keepsakes ran out of the January Kit of the Month in mere hours, and they apparently haven't been able to get it back in stock. So I lost my drive by the time February came around... Not exactly sure why. I knew I wasn't going to get the cool kit that Becky Higgins was praising up and down for what seemed like forever... Getting me all excited about it and stuff!!! {LOL} So I guess I knew this wasn't going to turn out the way I had planned so I pretty much just gave up.


So, I've moved on.


But I did manage to document the entire month of January 2009 in pictures, so I was considering making a mini album all about January. What do you think? I've got so many chipboard albums in my stash, not to mention my Zutter Bind-it-All... seems like the perfect opportunity for a project. And with Christmas and Valentine's Day projects now behind me... what else am I gonna do for some fun??? LOL


Well, one thing I DID manage to do was to follow the lead of the 3 Little Birdies and create a quick and easy fabric wreath to hang in my home for Valentine's Day. I'm planning to keep it up throughout February... what do you think?





I must have cut 100+ squares (seriously, I have no idea)... but it was fun! I think I'll use this technique to make other wreaths in the future! Thanks for the idea, Birdies!


In case you want to know how I did it, here are some pics of the process:












I'm keeping my heart up throughout February. Still another week to go.

Inauguration Day.

Barack Obama has just stepped out to the "stage", introduced as the "President Elect," probably for the last time. He's greeting people, shaking hands as he moves along down the walkway toward his seat for the Inauguration ceremony. People in the crowd are cheering his name... "O-ba-ma!" Within the next hour, history will change for the United States.

I'm sitting here in my family room, watching the Inauguration Day news coverage on NBC... It's about 10 minutes till 9:00 am PST. I'm drinking my Starbucks Non-Fat No-Whip Peppermint Mocha and thought maybe I should blog this moment for myself while it's actually happening. I'm quite sure that such a monumental event will not happen again in my lifetime.

I may not have voted for this man (not so easy to admit, but true...), but I now believe he is most qualified for the job of President of the United States. I wish nothing but the best for him and will pray for him often. Lots of people have such high expectations for him. I only ask that he makes decisions with the best interest of the nation at heart. And I look forward to freshness his leadership brings to the United States. High hopes, not unrealistic expectations, I would like to think.

He's about to be sworn in. I'm going to stop for now so that I may fully experience the moment. The pomp and circumstance is really quite fun to watch.

I've got a fun idea for how my family and I will celebrate this day. More on that later today.

:)

Project *365* -- Week 1

So, I've begun documenting 2009 with Project 365... a concept put together by Becky Higgins. I wasn't able to order the Project 365 Kit when it went on sale January 1st (it sold out), but hopefully I'll be able to buy one when they figure out how to get more of them!

For now, I'm just making sure that I keep up with my picture taking and journaling... That way, I'll be all set to put it together when I actually get the product. Here's a look at my first week, which started on Sunday, December 28th.

Day 1

*Funny... I didn't take a picture this first day, of all days! But I've been sick and Sunday was the WORST day of all!*

journaling:

It was a lazy day today... Dinner in the Crock-Pot all day, me trying to get over this wretched cough & cold that's been giving me such a hard time for over two weeks! And to top it off, I'm all swollen! Must be some type of allergic reaction to something I ate today! The kids are out riding on their new rollerblades... and we're all settling back in to the NORMAL after the excitement of the holidays.


Day 2

journaling:

The triplets are sporting their new Vans today... a gift from their big sister, Julia. They picked out the colors they liked best: Malia, light blue; Kaia, indigo blue; Marisa, purple. Adorable {times} 3 !


Day 3

journaling:

My new Uggs arrived from Zappos.com in the mail today! Love Zappos customer service, by the way; they upgraded my standard shipping to OVERNIGHT just to be nice... I LOVE these boots... They feel like a warm blanket!


Day 4



journaling:

We spent a quiet night at home for New Year's Eve. Usually we have our family from Las Vegas over... but we were all too sick this time around. It was so chill... and the kids were asleep by 9:30pm! Not so exciting, but a nice change!


Day 5

journaling:

For New Year's Day, we had visitors. Our good friends, Jason & Melissa Adams and their sons Jacob and Jared came over to exchange Christmas gifts. We had lunch together and watched a couple of movies on TV. A very good day with friends!

Day 6

journaling:

The triplets had a ball putting together new puzzles today! Of course, they had some help from Mom & Dad... but they did some of it on their own too! Love to see their little minds working to figure out how to put the pieces together...

Day 7

journaling:

Today was one of those "Macaroni & Cheese for dinner" days. I'm still a bit under the weather and just didn't have the energy to cook a full meal. On a side note: the kids really like this new Mac 'n Cheese... they used to only love that OTHER blue box, but they love this one even more! Yay for me, cuz it's about half the price!

I'll check in again after documenting next week!