Easter Monday

Easter Monday had to be the most beautiful day of the year.  It was gorgeous!  The weather was warm, it did not snow, the sun was shinning and the cherry blossoms are in full bloom.  With such a perfect day we headed downtown to the Nations Capitol.



Jay and I both had off work so I skipped school and and pulled the kids out of school and took the whole troop to the Smithsonian.



Our main Smithsonian we wanted to see was the  Museum of Natural History.



This museum is so incredibly awesome, well all of them are.  Another reason we wanted to go that week was by the end of the week they are closing the dinosaur exhibit for the next 5 years.  Yes five years.  They are doing a complete remodel of it and that is not easy.



Our kids are not that into dinos but they do like them.  If they did not have the chance to see them now they won't for quite a while.  And Smiley he is having a dinosaur birthday in June so why not get him hyped up now.  They had fun, so much fun.



Baby kept running up to us and yelling RAAWW!!





People used to tell me how much these two look a like.  I saw it but as their mom I always thought they look different too.  And the past few years I thought they were really growing their own looks.   However this picture, I do see their close looks but more so I see how much they are growing up.  It is not baby looks but I can see the teen looks developing.  Wipe the tears from my eye!



one of those two for a throw back Thursday.

It looks like the dinosaur is going to get them!



My little LOVES!!



Even though the dinos were cool the boys are into gems, rocks and stones.  So after we saw the dino bones per their request we went to the gems and Hope diamond.



They loved it here.



The kids did so good this day.  They were well behaved and such a pleasure!  Well minus the tongue sticking out.

A beautiful day!



We made our way over to the Air and Space Museam too.





They had fun there too.  And were able to touch so much more stuff.



There were all these tepees on the Mall.  Protesting for something and I only know that much cause I saw a stop the pipe or something sign on the ground as we were trying to figure out why they were there.  Rule one of a good protest, let people know the cause.  Oh well the kids had fun running in and out of them.









Why don't we go down there more often?



Its close, there is so much to do?

Maybe we will.  We had a great time and it was so worth it when the kids said so too.

March is over!

Whew we made it through the March birthday madness. We still have both mothers birthdays coming up later in April, but that feels like such a nice break till then.  Whew.  I am glad it is over and...just glad it is over.  My daughters birthday was the last of the March ones.  We had a bunch of things planed but the kids were just not their best.  We had lots of running to do to, and that all conflicted with my perfect mental image of a sweet princess/ Angelina Ballerina birthday for her.  However, she was BEAUTIFUL and still had a great time.  More than a few meltdowns from each child and I think at lest 2 from me.



She turned 3.  She is a grown up still my baby 3.  I am just as crazy about her now as ever maybe more.  This girl is AWESOME!



I know it is know almost a month past her birthday but that is because it is truly hard for me to find the time to blog anymore.  I try and try but..I am exhausted and always busy.  But that is why I love instagram.  You don't get the stories but you get a glimps about what is happening and really how many of you read what I right or just scroll through and look at the pictures anyways?



She wanted an Angelina Ballerina cake.  I could not find one, I did not have the time money or skill to make one, so I ordered her a princess Faith ballerina cake and she was over the moon she loved it!!  She still talks about "my Angelina cake with my head"  Although it was a bit weird eating Faith.



And the reason we now have back up plans/relighting plans for birthday cake candles.



They all laugh when it is not their birthday, but when baby blows out the candle on their special day oh they cry.  But each of the others did it when they were babies age too.

We went to watch Frozen again.  But this time in her new costume from  Ms. Ginny, she loves it and still wears it all the time!  Thank you.  And for the frozen microphone and Elsa doll they were perfect and she loves loves them.



I know this is not the best picture but here is baby watching her brother eat popcorn.  If you saw them she was astonished like oh that is how you do it.  And below is another bad picture.  Sorry it was dark in there.  My parents came to to see Faith on her birthday and help me out.  Can you believe they had not seen Frozen yet?!  How did anyone make it without seeing Frozen?



Yay know idea what my oldest is doing.



And a selfie of me and Smiley!  My love boy

The movie was great, again, again x8 or 9 times then.  It was so fun to see all the little girls dressed in their Frozen outfits.  Girls are such princesses.

It was a nice birthday even with some of the hardships.  And truly now nearly a month later I don't remember the stress, I just melt at the princess pictures.

Ice fest 2014

Icefest is truly one of my favorite "holidays".  It is local, gives our family roots in a community tradition as well as a family one, it is not at my house so I do not have to clean, my family comes, my parents brother and niece, it is really cool, amazing artist show off their talents, and their is a chili cook off, but sadly because of all the kids pallets we have not been to that part in a few years.  There is also an Ice Ball which I so very much want to go to, maybe one year when I can find a sitter, and they have special theater events, ballets, cake contest, bands, it really just keeps getting bigger and better.  The only down side is it is SO COLD!!  Yes it is right during our coldest times of the year.  It has to be to keep all the ice still ice but some years are worse than others.  With the surrounding weeks dropping down to the negatives and highs sometimes in the single digits we were over joyed when this years Icefest was in the sizzling 40's!!  It was a single day heat wave, the next next two days it dropped and snowed us in again.  But with warm weather we, the whole town headed out, some in t shirts and shorts, it was not that warm but at least I saw no flip flops.

This year the older boys each had art work in Ice fest.


Evan had an owl and chickadees


Gregory had a haiku and many snowflakes

Besides the kids awesome art the ice artist did fantastic jobs once again.


We all loved this guy from Monsters Inc.  Just to darn cute.  And Smiley scaring just to perfect.


This giraffe was my favorite.  The picture does it far from justice but it was...cool. haha


And my boys in front of a truck well that just fits doesn't it.


There is getting to be to many of them to fit on the biggest ice chair.  Awe I remember bring only 2, once upon a time.


Me and the kids by a dog and a golfer.  The ice sculptures line the both side of streets and some allies for  over 4 blocks.


My parents and the kids.  Yes that is Smiley licking the sculptures, smh.

However to the bigger kids nothing tops the ice slide.

The boys all love this.  The girls loved the s'mores station better.

It was fun and not so cold.  A nice chance to be outside in the middle of crippling temperatures that keep us in most days.

other years:
2008
2009
2011

And there is more but ... recently we lost an entire hard drive of pictures.  I need to print more out immediately.  Such a flaw of mine.

Our successful Superbowl party

We had our party and it was great.  The kids were so excited and ready for it, they were busting at the seems.  From 2 o'clock on and the game was not until 6:30 they were watching the clock and asking can we play the games now?!  They had spent all morning decorating.  The place really looked festive with the mix and match mostly homemade decorations we went with.  We Hung stuff from the ceilings and the boys made posters and decorated the walls.

They made a scoreboard and loved keeping track through the game.  None of us could actually believe the Seahawks were winning.



Gregory was pretty glued to the tv.  He excitedly watched the whole game!  One of the game we had was a bingo game and of course skittles to be our place holders.



That was a fun one and I think looking for the stuff is another thing that helped keep his interest.

His dad made it 10 minutes before he and the girls turned on Dora.



The other game we had was a pin the tail on the donkey type of game.



We blindfolded the kids spun them and the had little footballs to stick up.  Each goal was worth a different amount of points but we never kept track.

And of course the was food, lots of food.  I never even made a few of items because there was plenty and because it was so late here no one was that hungry.



I got new baking sheets a week ago and had not used them yet and yesterday was the prefect time.  They are fantastic heavy duty huge restaurant size sheets and they worked perfect and I was able to make tons of these homemade chocolate chip cookies that did not last long at all.  I also made chocolate covered strawberries and they too got gobbled up.

You can find all my recipes and games on my Superbowl pinterest page.  They were all quick, simple, easy and most importantly delish!

http://www.pinterest.com/karen_huse/superbowl-party/



And they were a few other little touches we did to make the night special.  Seahawks cupcakes (however the blue "frozen" frosting from a can... yuck)  But I loved the wrappers.  The boys made cups for all of us like footballs and monogramed each of them too.  That made me smile such sweet boys.  Gregory even drew a special heart of Faithy's cup.  And party poopers made them happy.  My kids love party poppers.  They were just as exited for the game to end as begin, so they could pop their poppers.

It was a great fun night that we all enjoyed.  Maybe just maybe we will do this every year.  Or maybe it was just the once in a lifetime event with Seattle.





Yeah they painters taped Seahawks on their belly.  Too cute!  I love these little guys!

A surprise Superbowl party

This year we are having a Superbowl party.  But it is a secret.  Yeah kinda weird.  A secret for my non football watching husband.  And a family time celebration  for all of us.  The kids are in on it and they are so happy.  They just eat up the time they get to spend with both mom and dad, all 7 of us having fun.

This year the Seattle Seahawks are in the Superbowl, Washington state is where my husband was born, where we meet.  I don't know where he has lived most of his life, there or other place but that is where he went to grade school and high school.  I even managed to knock out 6 years over there, in college and after.  Hence to say we both have fond memories of Seattle, although none of which have to do with football.

But still with Seattle going to the Superbowl he has become a bit...homesick.  I think he wishes he could be over there in the hype, the celebrating, and with his brothers.  He feels a weird attachment to the team not because he could even name one player but because 3000 miles away something is proving to be good from Washington, at least momentarily. [ Stupid pot smokers, you know I can say that because they will not even remember where they read this from!  Not that I would care if they did.  We really want complete disassociation with such a liberal backwards state.  Nothing against our families over there his and mine, nothing against the beauty because on those few non rainy days each year it is a majestically beautiful place, but we pretty much disagree on everything that is happening over there.]





With politics aside we are going to maybe somewhat watch the Superbowl.  No one in our home cares at all about football.  It truly falls below the dirt on our feet.  Honestly, we get pissed when the kids drag mud into the car or someone does not stomp the snow off their feet BEFORE entering the house.  UGH.  And the Superbowl we had to google it a few times to find out the other team and the date.  But because he mummered a few words of  "I think I will watch the Superbowl" I ran with it.  Actually I waited till he repeated that phrase a few times in different occasions.  Because I would rather do anything else.

So we are going to have a Superbowl party.   Now we LOVE Superbowl food.  So that was a no brainier.  I got together a list of so much more food than we could ever eat in a day/week and will cook it.


(Ignore the "frump" it was one of my lab days, no glam there.)

I  found a few super cute party ideas on pinterest.  I love parties!  So with both ideas I headed out to collect stuff.


Smiley helping me plan.

You would not believe how difficult this task would become.  I searched so many store and nothing!.  Yes, nothing! 3 sports stores to find outfits...nothing.  One of which was even called Olympia Outfitters.  And for those of you who do not know why that is ironic Olympia is the capital of Washington State.  No Seattle, no Superbowl anything.  I checked 5 general store that have  a bit of everything, you know the Target walmat store and such and they were empty.  They carried nothing mostly.  Except in a weird craft birthday corner spot in 1 of the Walmart there were these



my biggest score!  I can't believe how happy I was to find them and the lady at the store when I asked her if there was anything else said it was probably a mistake those were even here.  I don't care, there mistake my miracle.  How perfect.  Trust me I then started checking every craft, dollar and teacher store to find anything else for decoration.  I finally settled on scrapbook stuff and some ideas that will hopeful look as good in reality as in my mind.  Nothing spectacular though.  Again it is okay we will probably switch the channel to Duck Dynasty or anything else during this boring life sucking game.  But the point is we will all be happy to watch anything else together.

Anyways it is a surprise for Jay.  Something I hope makes him smile, even if we do watch it or don't.  We will hopefully have a few couple hours of fun.  Clean fun, as we won't be watching the half time show or commercials.  And yes of course I will be posting the recipes and what happened, the kid games I have planed and did we watch it or not????

So now lets clean and get ready for our Surprise Superbowl Party!

New Years 2014

Happy New Years!!  Are you excited?  A new year is not that exciting to me especially when so far nothing has been going right.



I had lots of New Years plans.  Kid friendly ones because I have anything but a wild fun party life. It would however be nice to go out to a fun over the top adult New Years Party before my husband is in the nursing home.

But none of my plans worked out, none.  It was frustrating.

We did go to Burger King and got some ice cream.



I had to talk the kids into it.  The weather was so cold in the 20's and expecting winter storm Hercules tomorrow.  Ice cream was not the easiest sell but we had coupons and they expired that day so we had to go.





However once there in the very busy restaurant, the kids were happy for their ice cream.  And the lady who was so sweet and patient with my family and the 3 orders we had to split it up between to be able to use the coupons let me know they would except them past their expiration date.  Good to know.

We came home and still plans kept unfolding, nothing that I had planned was done, nothing.  I gave up.  The older 2 stayed up and watched the ball drop the tiny team went to bed and I fell asleep on the couch.

You can try to be the perfect pintrest mom planning fun things to do great food to eat and memories to make but when you live in the real world you kinda have to take the ups and downs and changes as they come and life rarely ever mimics the perfect ideal you want.  And I would not always believe the ideal you see of others online.  They put forward what they want you to know, not what is always constant.

Over the next few days we did end up doing most of the things I had wanted and I made some of the wonderful meals I had planned.  If I can say one thing about this year so far is all the meals I have made (2)  (well two new ones, adult ones, I did feed everyone every meals plus some.  But one even my girls were the main eater of ) are over the top.  That is good news.  I go in swings with meals some weeks everything is awesome and others like the turkey lasagna are left 90% uneaten in the fridge until they start smelling bad.  So here is to the good ones why they are working out.  And not just good ones but GreaT ones that I copied from

Pioneer Woman
Chicken Parmigiana



this is the one the girls devoured wine, garlic, onions and all.  YES!!  I love when they eat the same things as us.  And you cook the alcohol in the wine out so no worries.

Half Baked Harvest
Crockpot Carnitas



Oh my heavenly goodness this was AMAZING!  We loved it, not for kids it is spicy, but we loved it!  It will be on the regular go to menu.  Yum.

I did doctor this one slightly.  Only by adding black beans and lime to the rice.  Monterrey Jack cheese instead of cheddar, chicken broth instead of beer because we just don't drink beer and it sucks when you walk into a bar and order just 1 beer to go, for cooking.  They laugh at you and to prove then you are not a sissy you have to stay for a real drink.  It is just so much easier to use chicken broth and it tasted great.  But I wonder what it would be like with the correct beer, maybe next time I will up stain the laughter and get the beer, I will let you know.  At least we are not sissy enough to buy the overpriced non alcoholic junk at the grocery stores, now that is for real wimps.  I mean really does anyone every buy that?  Oh and sour cream instead of guacamole.  I would have preferred the guac but I am allergic to it and I know without a doubt if you are not allergic to it go with the guac it would be better.  I wish I could...

And neither food picture are mine.  No plating was pretty enough nor lasted long enough for a picture.

Another great highlight for 2014 was I thought I started back to school on Thursday.  I could not sleep the night before and was up way to late laying there in bed staring at the clock.  Still I woke up to my sons stupid alarm playing what does the fox say so loud.  His room is down stairs mine is up and he slept through it.  I got up got ready and went to school.  I sat there by myself and waited, and waited.  No one came.  My school does not start till Monday, it was the boys were the ones who started back.  I did actually know that though and got them to school on time but only with the school sending us continually texts that they might not have school or close early because Hercules was getting closer.  And he sure did.  They did end up staying the day and luckily made it home before the worst came.



But school was canceled the next day.

Oh it was so cold the high was supposed to be 3.  Yup that is right.  And with windchill it stayed in the negatives.  I kept all the kids upstairs where it is the warmest and bunked them up together and with me to stay warm.  We do not have forced air, central heat.  We have a pellet stove and a propane fireplace.  Which is inefficient except for the 1 room it is in.  And wouldn't you know we are having trouble with both.  Most nights except for in these extreme cold temps we have no heat.  I turn everything off and we stay in bed under our blankets if we get cold we add another blanket or cuddled up in bed with someone else.  The house upstairs does not drop down past 60 because it was heated up all day so typically this works.  But just not when it it in the single digits or negatives then I leave the stove running all night as I did Thursday night.  But it was not working.  It kept cutting of and on repeatedly for nearly an hour.  I was very worried.  I prayed and prayed please don't let us have no heat on the coldest day of either year.  I went down stairs and monkeyed with it removing built up ash and seeing how high the flames were getting, not good.  It filled up with smoke and did not work.  I thought I would be gathering the kids and spending the next few days at my parents, where it is even colder but they have good heat, but have not been able to get up the driveway for the past week or so because of the snow.  I unplugged it let it power down and then started it back up, this seemed to work and thank God it has been working since.  Even though it runs and heats off pellets the augers are powered electronically so no power no heat.

Now on to the fireplace.  Oh the room it is in get so very cold that room easily drops in to the 40's maybe lower.  (Our thermometer stops at 40 in there)  Each morning we have to warm up the room, them warm up the LCD tv we have in there before we can even use it.  And the fireplace that is in there too  has been acting horrible all winter.  I have nothing good to say about it.  It rarely starts and most of the time you have to do so by hand, it constantly smells like gas, and often makes a hissing sound that even my oldest now knows how to run and shut off.  That Friday after dealing with the stove through the night I had to deal with the fireplace in the morning.  I could not once again get it to start.  I went to the fireplace and bent down leaning towards it with my long hair you see in the first picture when suddenly it poofed put and started in big bellowing flames.  Imagine when you ignite your grill or have a flame up on it.  It is quick, hot, won't hurt you but is not good.  Well it singed my hair pretty good.  the ends were all burned, black, crispy, curly and it smelled horrible.  It got a little around my face but since I still have my eyebrows it was not that bad.  But I could not even brush my hair it was burned.  So an emergency trip to the beauty salon.

They cut...



They chopped...



They layered, and it is different lengths on each side..



And they curled it.  Not that I can ever duplicate this.



But even today with out there help it still looks real pretty.

But not according to my kids.  I came home and my oldest says "great you got the quintessential mom hair cut".  Ugh...brat.

I still like it well enough and it is long enough for me to pull back in my labs.  It will grow.  But please 2014 lets stop with the mishaps.

Today was no winner either, but at least without tragedy.  Tomorrow we are expecting an ice storm.  Monday everyone back at school.  January is tough in PA so is February and March.  The weather is bad the kids stay home and the bills keep coming.  Oh I don't want to mention my sweet hefty energy increase for having 4 trees.  OUCH!!  They had LCD lights I don't understand but it was just another lesson learned from 2014.  If I don't have a job don't spend and extra $100 on electricity.

So here is to tomorrow a new day and the hope it can only be better, please.