It's official, like a referee with a whistle....

I'm OFFICIALLY Married!  Ok, well, I've BEEN officially married obviously since our wedding date... but yesterday I finally got our marriage certificate (I was so cheap i didn't want to pay for one, lol!), and today I went and changed my name on my license ANNNNNND at the social security office.  I had planned to only change my license because I wanted to wait to change social security until after we got our taxes filed and back cause I didn't want to have them sent back... we always have some kind of tax drama.  But anyway, After waiting like an hour at the DMV with my great friend Mendy, the lady says "have you changed your name on your social?" ummm... no...  "ok, well you have to change it by Monday cause this goes through in 3 days and if it doesn't match your name on your social it won't work."

everyone say it with me...

Uuuuuuuuuuuugh.  So, I headed to the next dreaded government office....

I was surprised to find barely ANYONE there and I was only 2 numbers away right when I walked in... SCORE!  All that went well, I only sat for maybe 15 minutes.  Although while I sat I listened to a guy behind me talk about how he just got out of jail for a felony... and it was a violent crime.  What was he there to do???  Get money!  Try and get on Medi-Cal, and the girl with him was telling him how she called and he can still get on section 8 housing even WITH a felony.  Nice, right?  I'm so glad our tax dollars are going to people like this!  Seriously.  I know people who are struggling and can't even GET assistance cause the state claims they still make to much.  But apparently if you go to Jail, when you get out they'll hand you the damn world.  Grrr.. Frustrating.  I've NEVER gotten any kind of assistance.  Even as foster parents, every foster baby automatically qualifies for WIC for the formula.  Yeah, I did it once and never again.  It was such a pain in the butt.  And I honestly hated going and being treated like a crack head who didn't know how to take care of a baby.  Come on, I'm a foster mom... So I stopped.  I'd rather pay for their formula. 

Anyways, Then I headed to the school to pick up Aiden and his friend cause Nolyn was staying with the friends sister at their house while I went to social security.  I stopped by the school office to get a physical form because Nolyn has a preschool physical on Monday the 28th, and the preschool said it should count as the Kindergarten/1st grade physical.  And they said no, he has to get it on March 1st!!!!  Really?  What the heck.  ONE DAY DIFFERENCE!  It takes 2 months to get a physical appointment at every doctor around here and they want me to do it twice for ONE day!  They're crazy.  So I'm gonna copy Aiden's form and have the doctor do it and hopefully just get him to date it for the 1st. 

That was my day!  lol  We hung out with the Kids friends and their Mom that I'm friends with after school over at their house.  Good times!  The kids got busted in the mud pit.  Fail!  lol  Not the greatest idea they've had at a friends house.  Don't get me wrong we struggle with mud it seems like DAILY lately and I've learned to get over it.  But when they have to ride home in my car.... not so great.  Luckily they ran around like maniacs for an hour or so after they went in and the mud wasn't so bad anymore so we survived and made it the like 30 seconds home.  lol  At least we live close.

It's freezing and we're expecting a big "storm."  Those of you who know San Diego, know that a "storm" entails a little wind and a good amount of rain and some snow in the mountains.  But of course watching the news you'd think the world is ending or something!

I'm really looking forward to church this weekend.  Last weekend was REALLY hard.  I mean REALLY hard.


As it is, when we sing in the beginning it's hard for me not to cry.  It's like I can just feel all the positive energy in the room and it just makes me tear up.  A good tear.  Like I can just feel this amazing feeling.  But then in the middle of singing, the pasture tells us about his wife leaving for texas for radiation.  Wow.  Rough hit when we just lost Jareds grandma to cancer on Tuesday (2/15/11), and jareds uncle on the other side of his family is dying of cancer.  It was so hard to hold back and not burst into tears.  Jareds grandma was with us and she was crying.  Hard.  So hard.  This week I'm hoping to be more focused.  I was so exhausted and sleep deprived for church last week it was rough focusing.  This week I can't wait! 


My amazing husband has been stuck at work 2 extra hours today.  As it is, he gets off at 6pm.  Now it's almost 8 and he just left.  I have a fire going and I'm so ready to be snuggling with *him* in our bed.

Super Cute Mini-Muffin Recipe I made for M.O.P.S.!

So, M.O.P.S. meeting today was great.  It's such a good feeling to know you are a good mom even when you don't know what to do ALL the time. 

My name is Katie.....

My house isn't always spotless

My laundry isn't always done

I usually have dishes in my sink

My kids seem to always get dirty no matter how much I clean them

My kids are noisy 

My kids don't listen majority of the time

My kids throw fits

My kids get bumps and bruises

My kids argue with eachother all day

I don't always have time to shower before dropping them off at school

...And I'm a good mom!

No one's perfect but I think I'm damn close!  lol

So We did a TON of stuff at M.O.P.S. today....

We prayed, we watched a video, we did discussion questions, we made playdough, we got a photography lesson, we got a pan cleaning lesson, we decorated cupcakes and got a lesson on that, and.. man I can't remember the other table we rotated too.  hmmmm...

Anyways, discussion was good, one of the questions was something along the lines of children's stages and what's hard about them....  I shared the fact that to me stages are hard because the boys are SO close in age (13 months).  Also the fact that Aiden was adopted, and his birth mother did drugs while pregnant.  So, it was easy for me to "blame" any bad behaviour on the fact that he had a rough start...  So I did that for about the past year up until this last month.  Now, Aiden is amazing and Nolyn is going through the rough stage... let me tell you.  It wasn't the drugs!  He was a totally normal 4-5 year old and man am I glad he's almost 6.  Every day this week has been a battle with Nolyn.  He fights me on EVERYTHING...  He wants to do NOTHING for himself.  ugh...  I really really dread the mornings and having to deal with his attitude because it usually ends in him crying, whining, yelling and laying on the floor refusing to move.  Good morning sunshine?  lol  But it's good to know that after talking to every one, this too shall pass, just like it did for Aiden.  I can only hope now that I've had "practice" I can better deal with him than I did with Aiden.  

Now, Onto the fun stuff....  It was our tables turn to bring some yummy breakfast foods to M.O.P.S. and here's what I brought....

Yes, I made this yummy little creations!

I actually first made the cute little dots for the top.  I picked 4 quotes about moms that I liked and in photoshop made a sheet with copies of them.  I then used my 2" circle cutter and cut out about 40 of them.  They were a hit for sure.  I'll post up a link for a Printable download as soon as I can so you can use them too if you'd like! 

And if you want the recipe for these awesome heavenly little mini doughnut muffins, here it is...  I'm not sure where I found this first.  I think it's been on a few blogs, The first time I saw it I saved the recipe in my email so I wouldn't lose it.  I'll have to look in my links and see if I still have the blog it was on.

Cinnamon & Sugar Doughnut Muffins

Ingredients

• 1-3/4 cup Flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1/3 cup Oil
• 3/4 cup White Sugar
• 1 whole Egg
• 3/4 cup Milk

FOR THE TOPPING:

• 1/4 cup Butter (4 Tablespoons)
• 1/3 cup White Sugar
• 1 Tablespoon Cinnamon

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350°
• Combine, flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg, and set aside.  Mix oil, sugar, egg and milk, then added dry ingredients, mix just until blended.
• For regular size muffins: spray muffin pans with no-stick cooking spray and fill each cup 1/2 full.  Bake for 15-20 min. Yields 8-12 muffins
• For mini muffins (this is what I made) – spray mini muffin pans with no-stick cooking spray and fill each cup 1/2 full. Bake for 10-12 min. Yields 18 mini muffins.
• While muffins are baking melt butter in one bowl.  Mix1/3 cup White Sugar and 1 Tablespoon Cinnamon in another bowl.
• Remove muffins from oven, let cool for just a minute or two, remove from pan and place them on a platter.  Dip each muffin in the melted butter then roll in cinnamon and sugar.
• Let cool or serve warm.

I ended up multiplying this recipe by 3 because I needed more than what it said it would make.  I must say I ended up with over 60 muffins!  lol

This is the FIRST RECIPE EVER that I actually had ALL the ingredients for sitting in my pantry and the only thing I went out and bought was a mini muffin pan.  The last meeting there was a lot of sweets and I figured a whole muffin would be just too much.  The mini muffins turned out perfect an there was only 12 left at the end of the meeting out of the 40 I made! 

Valentines Day Rice Crispy Pops!

So, being that this is the first year my boys were in school and I'm pretty involved in their class and school, when the holiday's come around I go big!  When Valentines day rolled around I had my eyes peeled for amazing idea's to make for my boys to WOW their little friends who I love so much.  We live in a small tight knit community and I also went to the same school and know much of the staff from when I attended.  This puts even more pressure on, right?  lol

So, as I was browsing blogs I found an awesome download to make magnificent little cards like this....

Cute right!!!  Although I myself am a graphic designer, I was having a total mind block on what to do about their cards and when I saw this I knew it was right.  Also with all the home repair going on to get my home daycare started and trying to balance that and the kids along with our extra activities... ugh... premade sounded amazing to me.  The boys hate it when I sit on my computer!  lol

So you can download the template or a few others with different designers here....

Custom Valentines Day Photo Careds - by Eighteen25

So, I still needed to spruce up the cards a little and I knew the 4x6 format they were in would be a little too big to attach to a treat and it would just work better small.  I combined two on one 4x6 making their size 2x3, so two would fit on a 4x6 print and sent the prints to walmart.com 1 hour.  Went and picked them up and mounted them on some black card stock.  I love black, nice clean look! I then punched holes in the corner so they could be tied to string and voila... they were ready to go!

Now onto the treats.  I had seen a few things be dipped into chocolate before and I thought the best one to hold up to preschool and kindergarten kids would be rice crispy treats.  Hearts OF COURSE because it's the big V day!

So off I went to walmart.  Got 2 boxes of cheapo off brand rice crispys, 2 bags of marshmallows and I already had butter at home.

Now my kids get Valentines day off from school (don't ask me why, I think it's stupid) so their party was Friday the 10th.  So on Thursday I spent from 2:15pm til 10:00pm making 44 rice crispy pops!  lol

Excuse my horrible lighting.  I HATE out kitchen lights and I was using my on camera flash and the reflections were horrible and I was so messy I just had to snap shots quick. 

 

So, I used cookie cutters to cute out the hearts but then kind of molded them into more round hearts and added the sticks!

 I then microwaved white chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips in a small bowl and dipped the pops into the chocolate then immediately covered one side in Valentines colored sprinklers.

I let the pops dry for about 20 to 30 minutes and the white seemed to dry much faster than the milk chocolate. 

After drying I wrapped them in clear wrap, closed them with red twine, attached their cards to the twine, and tied a bow...... and 44 crispy pops and almost 8 hours later....

BAM!  Love them!

I must say I was the talk of the town!  lol  

Every person who saw them was amazing!  All the time was definitely worth it.

Top 10 things I wish I knew then... From my M.O.P.S. Speaker

So, I don't think I've discussed it on here but I've started attending M.O.P.S.  If you haven't heard of it it's Mothers Of Pre-Schoolers, and it's great AMAZING!  To sum it up, it's a small group that you'd attend at a church.  It's for... well, obviously, mothers of preschoolers.  lol!  It's a bunch of awesome ladies who get together once every other week and talk, eat yummy potluck, and have some prayer and motivational time.

Now I'm NOT a "church" person.  I don't preach about God to people.  I don't read the bible.  I don't even know how to find a bible verse with those numbers like "john 3:16" or whatever.  My parents NEVER when to church when I was a kid.  I only went in churches when people died.  Never even went to a church wedding.  My parents always said you don't need to go to church to believe in God and that's really all I knew.  As a teen I attended a church with a friend but we went to "youth group" while her mom would attend the normal service which really means we'd leave youth group after about 5 minutes and go get breakfast at jack in the box and then be back before service was over and her mom came out.

Church always intrigued me.  It seemed to be this close knit community that I always wished we could be a part of.  So once I found the love of my life and we moved to a far away Rural community on the edge of San Diego County, we met friends in the neighborhood who attended church and their father was actually the preacher there.  We attended ONCE and I never wanted to return.  It was SMALL which I thought would be better...  which may be better in some situations but they were all about DEATH!  Oh my gosh.  I never left anywhere and felt so depressed in my life.  All they talked about was how they can't wait to die because life is so horrible and heaven is so great....  HELLO???  Was I the only one who wanted to make THIS life better.... to make my NOW, my SELF better? 

So, we moved back to my childhood home, built by my parents when I was 1 year old.  It's been almost 2 years now we've been here.  We decided to attend the LARGE local church.  Skyline.  We did enjoy it.  I get all tingly when I'm there.  I feel like god is with me.  Maybe it's the overwhelming amount of positive, hopeful, spiritual energy in the room.  Although I liked it I didn't attend again, we just got busy, we do a lot of camping on the weekends and it's just hard to make time some weekends and get motivated to GO!

So, about a year since the last time we attending takes us to now.

I met an amazing woman.  She is another mom from my sons class.  She works at Skyline, as well as her husband.  Her name is Ty.  I had talked to her a tiny bit about church here and there and mentioned we were interested in possibly attending.  She is absolutely one of the sweetest people I've ever met, and of course her husband is great too.

So, Another mom in Aiden's class, Mendy asked about Mops.  Of course I asked...  what's Mops?  Of course they explained it to me.  Mendy had attended M.O.P.S. at a previous church and LOVED it.  So, after we got the information, she asked me to go with her.  We also invited another friend with us, another mom from school named Alex.  We're all pretty close.  Ty even attended with us.

So, we went on Wednesday and I fell in Love.  The people, the feeling, the atmosphere, the positive conversation, the lesson, the conversation. 

We got food, sat down, met out table mates "The Painted Ladies" which we will be sitting with for the remainder of the season.  We met everyone who of course was nice and very welcoming.

We had prayer and then we all sat down for a guest speaker. 

She emailed us the outline of what she explained to us and I'd love to share it with you.  It was her top 10 things she which she knew then.  She is retired and has grandchildren and basically went over things she wished she would have done differently.....

#10  I wish I had been more fun-loving

I think I have this one under control.  I think I could do more....  Jared and I decided we want to explore San Diego more on the weekends instead of sitting in the house, especially with spring and summer around the corner.  We want to take advantage of San Diego.  Both of us were born and raised here and there's still SO MANY places we've never really explored.  

 #9   I wish I hadn’t been so (for lack of a better word) “anal”

        Meaning rigid, meticulous, overly organized

This one hit me.  Her example was your children want to play with you and you say "I can't, I'm doing the dishes."  The dishes will be there in 20 minutes!  I do this ALL the time.  Honestly after this meeting it made me realize exactly how much I do it.  I've already changed on that one and I've made an effort to give the kids more attention, particularly when they ask me. 

 #8   I wish I had found a hobby and stuck with it

I do a little bit of everything but I do want to get more into things.  I love photography but lately I've also had a strong desire to learn to sew.  I want to sew cloth diapers for our next little bay-bay! :D

 #7   I wish I had read more for pleasure

Let me tell you, unless it's a magazine or website I don't read it!  lol!  But there was a time when I did... it was before children and before the husband and I loved it.  I'll definitely get into it again. 

 #6   I wish I had taken time out for me

 

I do this but when we have more extra cash I'd like to do more....  a pedicure or a massage... something like that.  Not just time on the computer, not just along time cleaning house!  lol  When the boys go with my ex though and the hubby has to work I definitely lay on the couch and watch my lifetime movies!  lol

 #5   I wish I had been more deliberate about building girl friend relationships

I used to not really care about this.  I've realized since Aiden entered Kindergarten how important this is.  Since all the kinder moms have to walk the kids in and out of school we have to be together a lot.  We talk a lot, our kids love eachother, we have playdates, we do coffee.  Now when I don't see them I actually miss them and talking to them.  I never realized how important female relationships were to me.  Now I couldn't be without them.  QUALITY female friends.  Not users, not negative people, not people who judge or criticize, just females that are there for YOU, who love you for who you are.  

 #4   I wish I had been more proactive in building character traits in our children and also helped them to find their special talents/giftings

I also love this one.  My children LOVE to be creative and it used to drive me nuts... the mess of paint, markers, glitter, paper scraps... ugh.  But now every day I make creative time.  Today for example, Nolyn had two large stick he wanted to make a "kite" out of...  not that it would fly cause they were rather large heavy sticks, but I busted out the masking tape and construction paper and we make a kite that was as tall as them, they colored on it with markers and they LOVE it!  more than their expensive toys!  lol

 #3   I wish I had been more attentive to my relationship with my husband

My husband is very "needy" when it comes to me.  Not that he needs me to do everything although I do a lot (but he works a 40+ hour job and I do not so I can't complain), but if he doesn't get a lot of attention from me he definitely gets upset.  He thinks something's wrong, he thinks I don't love him, he thinks he's not good enough... ugh.  lol!  Some days I'm just moody and don't feel like talking and stuff but I've been more focused on sending him lots of good text messages while he's at work during the day and really staying off the computer for the most part...  except of course for this post cause it's taking forever cause I won't shut up!  lol  I make it a point to make "him" time.

 #2   I wish I had known about the Love Languages for my husband, children and also for myself

I don't really have much to say about this one we didn't touch on it a ton.

 #1   When my kids were younger I wish I had focused more consistent time with God

This was a biggie for me also.  This is why we've decided to attend church on Sundays and I attend M.O.P.S. every other wedensday.  It's also my goal to help my children develop a better relationship with god.  Sunday School will help with that and I'd also like to help my children start learning about prayer.

I honestly can not wait for the next meeting and I plan on doing a sort of recap the meetings and what I get out of them here.  

I must say I'm excited about my new closer relationship to God and excited to see where it leads and what doors it opens.

A new, smaller me is back! lol

So, It's been a bit.  I've been C R A Z Y busy doing work around the house!  cleaning, painting, scraping ceilings!  I can't wait to show some before and after pictures!

We FINALLY found our flooring.  We're going with a cheap laminate wood in the living room, entry, hallway and two bedrooms.  We're doing an 18x18 tile in the kitchen, office, bathrooms and the master bedroom.  The master has a jacuzzi tub in it which is where my munchkins take their baths and yeah, when they take baths the water is ALL OVER the floor so if we did the laminate wood in there, it would be thrashed.

We're having the living room professionally installed because it's 1168 sq. ft. and I just don't feel up to doing THAT big of a room!  lol  It's bad enough I have to scrape the ceilings and respray them!  lol  I'm doing pretty good though.  I plan on more scraping today.  The kids are going with their "old" dad, aka my ex, for the night.  My poor hubby has inventory tonight and will have to work super duper late 'til they're done.  ugh.  So yeah, I'll have a lot of time to kill.  But in between that I have to clean for people to come over for super bowl tomorrow.  Although luckily it's just super close friends so I don't feel the need to be anal about the cleanliness.  Especially since there's a white dust settled all over everything from the popcorn ceilings when they came down in the area's I did yesterday.  lol  MESS!

Anyway, I'm excited about the floors but it's so much work to do before they can go in, it's a little intimidating to be honest.  lol.  All the floors have to be taken down and resprayed, all the rooms painted... I mean luckily we're kinda doing the floors room by room so once all the ceilings are down, then I'll paint then do floors room by room kinda thing.  Although the living room is already painted, we'll just have to go over it once the ceillings sprayed.  Some spots on the walls needed a second coat anyway.



So yeah, that's where I stand...


OH YEAH!  HOW COULD I FORGET???

The smaller me!!!  lol!

As of yesterday I was down exactly 19lbs! :D  Thank you weight watchers for helping me kiss 19lbs goodbye in exactly a months time! :D  yay!!!

And that's with 100% no intentional exercise.  I mean I've been doing house work, but I have not went to the gym and I have not done any videos... nothing :D  Yay!