hide and seek..

Lilly was apparently playing hide and seek the other night. She about scared me outta my pants cause i walked into my room and she was holding the suitcase closed. The things she dreams up in that little head of hers. lol. So the other girls joined in her game.

cant think of a title.. lol

I can't think of any witty title so i'm just going spill on whats been going on around here. No news is pretty much good news. We have been busy as bumble bees around here. Emma has been here for over a week now and she is staying till i think next wed. We didn't go to big surf ( the water park) last monday so we are going this monday. Should be a blast and that's why emma decided she would like to continue to stay with us till then. lol.. Emma has been working on listening while she is here. (I think i'm not made out for two kids) She is a great kido and helps with lilly and always cleans up her messes and helps with chores but she just doesn't listen to save her life. I might as well be talking to a wall when i tell her anything when the t.v. is on so we have been limiting t.v. to maybe a movie at bedtime if they are good. She will do anything you ask her to but she just doesn't have the attention span when she is doing other things to concentrate on what you told her to do so we are working on that while she is here. We went to our new house to check up on it again and show my friend and i swear i told emma like 5 times not to set her "crown" hat down anymore cause i knew she would leave it. yep after the 5th time she still set it down and i was so pissed when i realized she had still not listened that i just said to dang bad and we left it there. ( where ever she left it lying around at) So that was yesterday and we had a huge talk about it on the way home after our friends left. So i told her this morning we would do something fun if she behaved and listened. Well sure enough before i had to tell her to get dressed like 4 times and it made me red in the face about the fourth time ( granted i have never had that much patience) so we started the morning with another talk and a spanking. I haven't had to spank her in a long time. She is getting so big it seemed kind of strange so i may just come up with a different kind of punishment for when she is here or jsut let allan spank her from now on. I think that would be harder for her anyway really. Allan can say one word and have her dressed and in the car. lol.
So my other one.. Lilly.. She is no better. She has turned into a complete copy cat. She copies everything Emma does. Oh and she is still telling me to " shh and hush" so she keeps getting spanked for that. She also wants to sneak into my bed every night. She tries to stay up way late just to get in my bed and yes i know it's my fault for every letting her in there in the first place. It's funny cause she hardly every tries to come in there when allan is home at night. But when he is working she tries everything she can think of to get in there. She was really brave the last night he was home though and walked right in there at about midnight and said loudly " hi mom" .... hi yourself as i marched her back to her room after i got a look and a talking to from allan. ( he thinks i need to be tougher on her) The problem is i don't really care that she comes in there when he isn't home. In fact i kind of like having her close. I think if i had two or three kids i wouldn't do that cause it would be to crowded but when it's just her here i don't mind it. So i need to not let her so that she gets out of the habit and we are consistent. all in all the girls are doing really good though and we always get tons of compliments about their behavior and manners so i'm not too worried and we do try to reward them for being good too.
What else? besides crazy kids.. oh Allan started his new shift at work. He will be working 4 on and 2 off rotating days and nights. So that will probably be better than all nights. Plus i think having him home at night will be nice. The nights shift was driving me nuts so at least now it's 50/50 between days and nights. We are still hoping they will hire a few more people and it will get to an even better shift but i'm happy for what we get. Plus i guess this new shift works out where they get like a 60 hour work week every week. before it was like a 48 and a 60. So it seems like less but it's actually more. ;-)
I still haven't started really looking for a job but i hear that the banner hospital that is right by our apartment is losing 11 nurses to the new hospital they are opening where we are going to live. They are hiring mostly internally for out there but the one that is close to me now is losing those 11 and they are also decreasing the nurse to patient ratio so now a nurse can only take care of 6 patients where before it was 8. So that means they were going to need to hire more nurses anyway then losing 11 on top of that means that they are going to need to hire some. So i may apply there. I think i would rather do a doctor office or make my own hours doing home health but we will see. I just haven't gotten serious about it yet. I'm kinda waiting for my mom to get here so that i don't have to put lilly in daycare..( i know that's where she got the 'shh and hush from) Anyway the kido's are asleep and i need to head that way. good night all.

just too busy to post.

We are way to busy around here right now but tomorrow may be slower. Please check out our photo share site for some new picutres. the address is http://allanandsarah7.shutterfly.com/

thanks!

happy birthday allan!!!!

home again home again.. jiggity jog.

We made it home again from laughlin. We really had a great time. Lilly had a blast with her friend zane which she calls " jake" . he is 4 but he keeps an eye on her and only bothers her a little bit from time to time.. lol.
We had a great time with a way fun resort. There was gorgeous pools to play in and there was a kids area in the casino where you can drop off your kids for a while. lilly loved that. it had everything a kid could possibly want to play with or do. Huge jungle gym equipment stuff. ball pit, video games, a big huge doll house that i think she really liked to play with.
allan went golfing with his friend jeff and i think they had a really fun time too. Anna and i went and played quite a few sessions of bingo. We ate at a yummy italian restaruant inside the resort. We stayed at two different places but the one we loved is called the AVI resort in laughlin. If anyone needs a cheap good fun vacation go there. They have rooms during the week for like 29 bucks or so. can't beat that. they have boating and skiing and tube rentals cause it backs up to the river. They also had tons of things goign on too. like pool party's with bbq and a band.
Anyway we made it home and we are just going to catch up with the usual routine. I'm doing laundry and i'm goign to start season two of nurse jackie tonight. I don't really recommend the show to anyone. I find humor in it but just because i went to nursing school anyone that isn't a nurse wouldn't really like it.. Allan is off to work. Lilly is taking a little nap still trying to catch up from the weekend. We are getting a big load ready to go to once upon a child. Also getting ready for emma to come see us. I think she is staying from the 21st to the 6th. We are planning a few things. I think a zoo trip cause anna has a season pass and she is goign to let me be the second adult on it and that means i can go anytime i want and take up to 4 kids all for free!! woohoo. So i'm planning on taking emma and lilly while em's here. WE are also going to go to the BIG SURF on monday. This place is awesome. Its a huge water park here. It has a great area for toddlers and some of the pools are covered with cabana's for shade. It's really neat. Lots of slides and the biggest wave pool i have ever seen! it's really awesome. We went last week but i decided i had to go back and take allan and emma too. They run really good deals to like mom's get in free on mondays and if you got later in the day it's like half price but still enough time to have a lot of fun. We also have a friends child's birthday party to go to on saturday. The little girl is turning 1 but lilly and emma are invited cause they have another daughter that's a little older than emma. they get along really well. Oh and i'm going to take emma school shopping while she is here so we havea very busy week coming up but a fun back to school week!! ;-)
hope everyone else is having a great time! We are really enjoying our summer even though it's hot as snot we are having a blast finding all the fun new things to do.

thanks to allan's aunt for sharing love this!!

we survived!

This was the picture after lilly had all the work done on her teeth. She was a mess like all kids but she recovered quickly really. i would say the first two to 3 hours were a bit crazy just that she couldn't get comfortable and she couldn't walk around well. But she took a little nap and this evening she was running around being her silly self. She was a little whimpier than normal but not too bad really. In fact we had to get the suburban turned into the shop to get the air conditioning taken care of before our mini vacation this weekend so our friend picked us up and we went then the kids wanted to go t mcdonalds and i wasn't sure if lilly would be up to it but she ran around with the best of them pretty much given she was 2 and they were 4 and 5. so now we are in bed after a long day relaxing. she was able to eat and hold everything down. She has even been asking for water cause everything else tastes funny i guess.

Other news... I passed my NCLEX!!! yep. I found out today! So i'm still waiting for official results from az board but quick results said yep!! so arizona takes forever with everything but my work is done so i'm excited!!!

more news.. i tried the netti pot. everyone swears by it that i know that has used it.. what's your alls thoughts? i haven't been able to taste smell and today i couldnt hear out of my left ear cause of horrible sinus stuff. It always starts as allergies and then every once in a while it goes into this crap where i can't smell and taste then it goes into an ear. So i decided to try the pot.. So far i can't tell any real difference and it made me throw up on the first nostril causei swallowed some. The second nostril went fine. I didn't see anything out of the oridnary come out of my nose.. in fact i didn't see anything besides water at all.. how many times should i do this before it just isn't working?? any input??

THanks for all the concern and prayers coming our way. We made it thru the hard stuff and we should be fine and quite for awhile. good night

well i took the nclex

it was by far the hardest test i have ever taken. i walked out of it felling like i probably should pay back the va its gi bill money for sending me to school cause i didnt learn a thing. It was nothing like i studied for. I wont know for a while if i passed or failed so now it's a waiting game to see my results. Since we aren't suppose to talk about the test at all i'm not going to post anything about what was on it or anything else obviously. Plus i don't want to discourage my fellow test takers because everyone's test is different. yes we all take the same nclex but it generates questions from a database of 3000 so we all get different questions so theirs could be way different anyway.

I'm off to bed now. thanks to all that prayed for me. i truly do appreciate it!
goodnight

aww the smell of rain

wish i could smell it but seeing it is pretty cool too. i can't smell anything cause i have some awful allergy stuff going on right now.It's midnight and i'm sitting on the back porchlistening to thunder and watching it rain. The lightning is beautiful here. Yes meggie i finally got to see a thunderstorm here. it isn't a huge one but it's still pretty amazing.
my friends holly and shelly took their tests today so a big congrats to them cause they both passed. Shelly got the official word and holly is still waiting for her official word. i need to go to sleep cause mine is tomorrow. So night night everyone. God bless.

the pressure.. lol

Allan was off today and so i tried not to study too much but to just relax most of the day. I'm not a good one under pressure cause i try not to complain about what's really bothering me and i end up biting allan's head off. So i did that most of the day. Thank you honey for being a good sport. With lillys teeth and my test being so close together well.. i've been feeling the pressure and stress. Plus it's a 110 degrees so that just puts you right in a good mood everyday. lol The nights are great the days are miserable.
We drove out to look at our new house today. We like to keep an eye on it and make sure nothing is happening. Sounds like they may have it ready in sept instead of oct but we are keeping our fingers crossed. The pool was dirty today. Usually it's pretty spotless but i guess the pump broke and they are having it fixed in the next week or two so there are alot of leaves and stuff floating around in there.. We are just glad that it borke before we took ownership and that they are replacing it. !!!
Two of my friends take their NCLEX's tomorrow so i want to send a big GOOD LUCK out to shelly and holly!! kick butt and take names girls! My other friend shelly passed her's this week so a big big CONGRATS out to SHELLY KING RN!!
Tomorrow i plan to do nothing but pick up this apartment a bit and do some laundry then i think i'm going to go have my toes done and maybe play bingo with anna tomorrow night since the guys are taking the kido's to wings and rings then i'll be coming home to try and sleep.. My test is at 4pm so hopefully i'm well rested and don't freak out all day. We drove by the spot where i'm suppose to take it just to make sure i knew how to get there.
Anyway lilly is having a bit of a rough night tonight. She keeps getting tears in her eyes. I think she is scared about sleeping alone in her room tonight. Some nights she has no problems, other nights she tries to stay up as late as she can to get to come to my bed, other nights she just crys and crys until it breaks my heart. I put her in there with allan and decided i would just let both of them fall asleep then move her so that i can get in bed. Allan is so tired tonight i don't think he cares at all he is just happy to be in bed himself and lilly is happy to not be alone so it's working i guess. Hope i don't stir it up when i go in to move her.. lol. good night all

making mama proud..

Okay i have to brag on my little kido. After i posted that horrible post about her first cuss word i feel like it's only fair that i should tell a nice good bit about her too. lol.. So lilly is just growing up by leaps and bounds right now. Yesterday she talked to my friend meg on the phone. She said " hi meggie, whatcha doing? I'm watching cartoons." The rest was a little bit of jibber jabber but it was cute that she feels comfortable enough to talk to people now. I also took her to daycare yesterday and to my suprise she wanted to go. She was happy to go see her friends and i said ok then i'm going to leave but i'll be back and she said " okay mama see you later" no tears no sad faces nothing.. breaks my heart a little but i'm glad to see her happy there too. When i picked her up from daycare yesterday like everyday she is way happy to see me but she goes back over to her teacher and says bye bye and she always gives them a kiss. I could tell some of them were a little suprised and taken back about wether or not they should kiss her.. ( it doesn't help that she always goes for the lips too) I should probably discourage her kissing everybody but its so innocent and sweet and before long she will be grown up and not wanting to be a sweet loving little girl she will be a teen.. lol. Anyway so afet she gave her kisses all the other kids were outside but one of the teachers came in with us to give me her stuff and she said " lilly is so sweet, she is really the quietest most polite kid i have ever met!" I thought this was an amazing compliment coming from a daycare worker who has probably met tons of kids. So lilly is really making me a proud mama. Oh and i thought i would also include that she is playing so funny now. She has started using her imagination in play. She will hold to things( doesn't matter what, pens, coins, etc) and she will make them havea whole little conversation and act stuff out. Its so cute to hear her playing with things like that.
Anyway tonight is allan's last night and he will be off for three days. I am about to study with my friend meg while lilly is sleeping in. i have two more tests to get thru before i test on saturday. I feel like i'm becoming more calm about it today. I decided that i was just going to get as much done today as i could and then i'm not goign to look at it again till i go test. no point in stressing i either know it or i don't. right?

four days and counting... yikes!

Am i a big pile of nerves today or what?? i start my mornings immediatly thinking about how many more days i have till my NCLEX test. I have 4. I spend most of the am stresssing about what i need to get done studying that day and how i'm going to do it with a 2 year old running around here all day and dora the explorer blasting in the background of all my thoughts. By the afternoon i have gotten usually one thing studied off the list and i feel burned out and i take a break. In the evening after i get allan off to work i study until i just can't think about things anymore and my test scores start to show it so i make myself quite and i go to bed usually around midnight or 1. repeat the next day.. lol but thank god there is only 4 more days of this.
on a different not i' would like to share a lilly story with you..
YOu can judge if you want to and say what a bad parent or whatever but i'll warn you ahead of time you better keep it to yourself! lol.. i don't care what you think about my parenting tactics, they work for us and everyone out there that has kids could do things differently... so could I but i'm probably not going to.. with that said here is my story..
LILLY STORY
Like i said in the above paragraphs i took a break in the afternoon to get myself and lilly out of the house away from all study stuff and out so allan could sleep without hearing us running around. So we went out for a late lunch just the two of us girls and then we were goign to do some shopping for sandals. We went to a baja fresh restaruant to eat. Those of you not familiar with it .. well it's like a rubios.. well like a fancier fast food place. This one happened to be in a very fancy part of a huge "for the rich" shopping center. That didn't stop us. We went in and since it was about 130 it was the end of the lunch rush but still had a good supply of customers in there eating. We ordered and they gave lilly a juice box.( yes she isn't suppose to have juice but i made an exception for lunch cause it was that or coke) Anyway lilly has some trouble with the juice boxes or capri suns. She just can't figure out that if you squeeze them they will spray your juice everywhere. So she had to wipe off her immediate area about 3 ties while we sat there but its was just drops of juice not a lot. WEll we finished and she had been such a good girl and i swear people just love this kid they watch her and talk to her everywhere we go.. complete strangers. So i had seen several eyes watching in our direction thru out lunch. Anyway we went to go throw our tray away and i did then lilly wanted to show her independence and throw her juice away. I liked that idea cause i didn't want it spraying in the car. So she held the trash can open and went to put her juice in and i blinked but when my eyelids opened i saw that she was spraying juice all over her head and down her arms and well everywhere. This is not what made me laugh immediatly because i should have expected this and well i was thinking "crap i have to clean this up." The thing that made me stop in my tracks was she decided that this moment right here was the exact time she wanted to test out her first cuss word ever. She yelled out with the eyes still watching us " sheet" . which meant " shit" for all of you that don't speak lilly and couldn't guess. so I had grabbed her and started using a napkin on everything wet and i said instictively " what did you say?" which was stupid for asking because of course she said it again even louder while people were looking. I was so blown away that all i could do was giggle and i couldn't get control of my " our in trouble" mom face to tell her not to say that ever. lol.. I finally did but that just made her want to say it about five more times because she is an out of control two year old who i may never take into public again. HAHA

Okay on a different note.. Allan is turning 30 on the 21st. Yep my honey bun is getting old but i'm nto cause i'm still 29 this year. lol We decided to make a big deal out of 30 and we planned a laughlin nevada trip with our friends anna and jeff. WE are taking lilly and their kid zane to go stay at a hotel for 2 nights. They have casino's with bingo for us girls, a million yummy restaruants, a beach with jet ski rentals, golf for the boys, a bowling alley and did i mention they have like a state of the art childcare facility for when we want to put the kids in there, all you have to do is stay in their casino or spots so that they can page you if they need you. So we are excited to go visit laughlin. IT's like a mini vegas i guess but it has a beach at the casino which is neat.
okay off to start my morning ritual of studying i guess.

Banana Pudding recipe..

recipe: Banana Pudding

All you need:

2 bags of Pepperidge Farm Chessman Cookies or 2 boxes of Lorna Doone shortbread cookies
6-8 bananas, sliced
2 ½ cups of milk
2 (3.5 ounce) boxes Jello Instant French Vanilla pudding
1 (8 ounce) pkg of Philadelphia Cream Cheese
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping thawed or an equivalent amount of sweetened whipped cream
Whipped cream for garnish

All you need to do:

Line the bottom of a 13x9x2 inch dish with shortbread cookies.

Layer the sliced bananas on top of the cookies. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the milk and the pudding mixes and blend well with a hand mixer (if you don’t have a hand mixer you can make it in a blender or a stationary mixer and dump it into the bowl when blended).

Using another bowl, combine the cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk until smooth (I used my stationary mixer and beat it on low speed until very smooth and creamy)

Fold the whipped topping into the cream cheese mixture.

Add the cream cheese mixture into the pudding mixture until well blended.

Pour the mixture over the cookie and bananas in the dish.

Cover the entire top with shortbread cookies.

okay as promised..

here are a few pics. The one of the tv stand is our newest piece of furniture and the only piece we have bought for our new house. We left our old stand with the house we sold because it was attached to the wall so we havne't had anything to put the tv on but now we do..

The next picture is lilly buying her first pair of jelly shoes. She was so cute cause she really picked them out herself and they happened to match the dress she had on so we put them straight on in the store and she loves them.

ok a recipe..

we had a very good fourth of july filled with friends that are like our family now since we aren't able to be close to ours on the holidays! lilly loved playing with all the kids. We had the fight night on the third and my food made a big hit. i want to give you all the cole slaw recipe that i use. Allan my husband who hates all veggies even ate every bite of coleslaw on his plate and said he was going to have more. So here it is.. a bag of cole slaw already cut in the bag, a cup of miracle whip, a 1/2 a cup of heavy whipping cream that is stirred ( they say until thick but i can't ever get mine that thick so just throw it in even if you can't), and sugar to the taste, 1 tsp of celery seed but you can do it to your own liking and i usually throw it in towards the last when i have the first three things mixed well. i don't like mine to taste like mayo so if you taste t and it's still too much mayo add more sugar and celery seed or more slaw till it's just like you like it. We love it with club crackers and we put pepper on it too. This is good old fashion southern cole slaw.. it's sweet like southern barbque not tangy and there is NO VINEGAR!! gt that crappy vinegar away from my coleslaw!!! lol oh another hint i like to make this the day before cause it's always better when it sits in the fridge over night and gets a little juicy. Tomorrow i plan on posting a few pics of the weekend and my banana pudding recipe that i found that was to die for!! it was gorgeous and so yummy so stay tuned..

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