Shiny Sinks and Heavenly Smells

My birthday was earlier this month and my main present from Brad was having 4 cleaning sessions from a young lady from our church, Beth Survant. I was a little apprehensive on how it would all go since I've never hired someone to clean for me. Should I make a list or does she have her own agenda? Will she be grossed out by the crumbs in my silverware tray? Will she do too much or do too little? etc...

Well I was suitably impressed and I think I'm addicted after just 2 hours. My sink was so shiny and my house smelled heavenly!!!! After Beth left I actually ran through the house squealing with joy at the euphoric feeling of having a beautiful home that smelled sooo good. She could have spent twice as long but alas, I have to limit my indulgences.


At one point during my cleaning session, I sat on the couch and read a book to the girls. I had visions of a postcard I get in the mail every so often...the one with a mom reading books to her kids while a cleaning lady is working in the background. The one with the caption "Life's too short to clean your own house." The one I laugh at and throw in the trash with a judgmental attitude. The one I will never look at the same again.

A Plate of P's

Do you ever sit down to a meal and realize your food is all one color or is all garlic flavored or some other common denomenator? Well today's lunch was a plate of P's.

My intent was to clean out a hodge-podge of food from the refrigerator and this is what we got:
a Pork BBQ sandwich with Pickles, Pizza and Popcorn. Before I had this revelation the girls had asked for popsicles for dessert (spurred on by a popscicle wrapper we had seen at the park earlier in the day). Once I discovered the P theme, I couldn't resist giving in to the Popsicle and having a Picnic :)

Catch-up

I'm still here. I'd like to think I'm too busy enjoying the Fall to blog about it.
Here's some pictures to capture the last month activities:

Carving Pumpkins

End result: 2 happy pumpkins checking each other out.

Trick-or-treating as a bumble bee and flower

2 nights away with friends and no kids!
We went to Nashville, Indiana, a place I've never been, but thoroughly enjoyed the mountains and quaint town.

Making homemade applesauce with Grammy Sauder - yum, yum
And a BIG thank you to Grammy for staying with the kids so we could get away.

Friday on the Levee

I'm a week behind...last Friday was beautiful and our family had a great outing to Newport on the Levee. We traversed the Purple People Bridge and amused ourselves at the incredible playgrounds at Sawyer's Point (at least I think that's where we were). We finished up the evening with a feast of delicious pizza and salads at Dewey's pizza.

From KY to OH

This is what you get when you ask Noelle to pose in front of the flowers:

And this is what you get when we ask Sadie to pose in front of the flowers, "like Noelle did."
Fun on the tire swing

"Guess What Animal I'm Thinking Of"

When I need an activity to keep the kids from driving me crazy at the lunch table or in the car...or anywhere really...I will play a game we call "Guess what animal I'm thinking of".

I think of an animal and then the girls, mainly Noelle, has to ask yes-no questions to figure out what the animal is. Here are some sample questions:

Does it have fur?
Does it have 4 legs?
Is it bigger then you?
Have you ever seen one in real life? (rather then in a book)

Recently Noelle has been trying to play this game with Sadie. It's obvious that Sadie doesn't quite "get it", but the results are very humorous. Here are 2 examples:

Noelle: Sadie lets play "Guess What Animal". You think of an animal and I'll guess it.
Sadie: Ok
N: Does it have 4 legs?
S: No.
N: Does it have 2 legs?
S: No
N: Does it have 3 legs?
S: Yes.
N: Is it a spider?
S: Yes!!

Even funnier is the fact that Noelle didn't see anything wrong with this and thought they'd had a great game.

Sample 2
Noelle: Sadie you think of an animal and I'll try to guess it
S: OK
N: Does it have 4 legs?
S: No
N: Does it have 2 legs?
S: No
N: Does it have any legs?
S: No
N: Is it bigger then you?
S: No
(at this point I thought Sadie was just saying No to everything, so I tried to trick her)
Me: Is it smaller then you?
S: Yes
(okay so much for my theory)
N: Is it a cupcake?
S: YES!!!

Ummm, isn't this game called "Guess What Animal I'm Thinking of"? Again, Noelle and Sadie seemed perfectly pleased with their accomplishment.