Lesson Learned

When your cookie sheets are covered with a mysterious sticky substance that isn't coming off, try soaking them for a while in hot sudsy water.
Don't spray them with oven cleaner.
Definitely don't lay them outside and forget all day and overnight that you sprayed them with oven cleaner.
If such an event should happen to you, just throw them away. They are pitted and the finish is ruined and flakes away.
Hopefully as the cooking season is here on our doorsteps, you can take this lesson learned to heart and scrub away the grimies a little longer. You just might save yourself 2 new cookie sheets and a few bucks.

I've been busy!

I've been so busy lately! I haven't been very good at keeping up with this blog - sorry. I've been working in my church office 3 days a week, among everything else that's been going on. I enjoy helping out there. It's a lot of fun. The only thing that gets old is telling people we can't help them out right now with things. People want a direct line of help from us and other churches in the community, but it doesn't work that way. We have to go through clearing houses for Christmas, Community Resources for utility help, and other things like that. I get hung up on a lot. It's sad. I almost cried the other day when I helped someone out to their car with all of the food pantry goodies and she had a little girl asleep in the back seat. It makes me so thankful, but also like I'm not praying hard enough for the kids in poverty like that. They don't choose to be in that situation. It's sad!
My in-laws are coming this week! I am so excited! But, I've been working around the house trying to get it clean. (I know you are reading this, Becky, but are you really suprised? Haha!) I still need to clean out their room that they stay in because I have turned it into my personal storage closet for leftover baby items, Christmas and birthday presents, etc, etc, to get stuff out of the way in my studio. No one ever stays at my house, so it's precious space that could be used - so I did and I have A LOT to move. Still not sure what to do with it all. Yesterday I organized back in my back basement. It feels good to have moved things around. It still need a lot of help, but at least we can move around down there now. Today, more cleaning.
I've re-arranged my basement making room for the flood of birthday and Christmas toys that will be showering down onto my poor tiny house over the next month. Half of the room is play land, the other half living room.
I got Elli a purple Christmas tree for her room yesterday. It's pretty cute. She's already pulled the bells off 5 times. The bells were a GREAT idea....seriously. I know when she's into her tree. The big tree should be fun this year.
I still need to put my etsy shop together, but I can't think of a good name. Maybe later this week when things settle a little, then I'll get it done. I'll let you know!
Should get ready for church now. Have a great day! We're having a heat wave! It's supposed to be 44 degrees!!

snow days already?!

This is yesterday's happy girl! We thought this amount of snow was pretty cool...it's only mid-November!

This is what we woke to this morning! We were out in it bright and early. We couldn't wait any longer!

This is how 24 out of 25 of my pictures look. Here's how they go - "Elli. Elli! Hey! Look at me! Smile! Show me your teeth! Hey! ELLI! Stop for a second. Look at me. Elliza. Smile! PLEASE! Just ONE picture!"
She was way too excited.

Nonsense

I have not been inspired lately. I am so depressed and tired all of the time that nothing thrills me and so I don't post. I spend 75% of my time in a doctors office of some sort from my stupid accident. At least next week I get to take the week off from therapy because the guys on vacation. I won't know what to do with myself. I mean, for the last 3 months I've been going to his office 3 times a week - among other visits to the chiropractor, tmj guy, and others. It's rediculous! I don't know what I'll do with a week off - I'm pretty excited :)
And I'm fat. So that's depressing. I need to watch what I eat, or just stop munching all of the time, or just stop eating. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to not eat stuff. I don't like getting older and needing to be careful about stuff like that. I've never really had to do it before - and not knowing is catching up BIG time (literally - have you seen my mid-line lately?)
Elli is in this phase where she is whiney. Very whiney. Everything is demand and if that doesn't work, she fake cries or fake whines. It's so annoying! I don't know what to do about that except pray that it passes soon. Seriously, it makes me crazy. And to top it off, she loves sitting on her time-out seat. What am I supposed to do about that?!!
I'm tired.
I need to start my etsy shop. I am not that busy tomorrow...maybe I'll do it then. I'll let you know. Maybe there will be a give-away or something to launch it...ya know, for all of you 5 readers that I have. :) I've got lots of leftovers from the craft show I did - which suprisingly enough wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. Generally I hate craft shows. But that's for another day.
On a positive note - it snowed today!!!! LOVE IT! I got some cute shots of Elli. And Mike (with a little of my help) has created an amazing Christmas card to send out this year - seriously, I am really excited about it!

The rest of the pics from Tuesday

I hate that this picture is blurry - but I love it. It's so sweet!

This is a face that he makes a lot - funny!!!

First time baby holder! She did so good!

Blakes pics from before

If you checked my blog earlier in the day, these weren't coming up - so here we go again!

This is the first time Elli saw Blake up close...

Trip to Aunt Becky's

Tuesday I loaded up my car with Grandma, Jackie, Wesley, and ofcourse Elli and we drove up to see little baby Blake! (And Becky & Travis too) It was a quick, but nice trip. Blake is so cute! And Elli was so good with him! She was very mothering and gentle with him. She told him "It's okay. Don't cry" when he got fussy, and kept wanting to hold him or entertain him. It was cute. Only once were we like "Whoa! Elli!" - when her favorite cartoon came on and she was wiggling when she was holding him. So she did pretty well! It was fun visiting - I am sure Becky was exhausted when we left. We really took over her house!
So now, I am a proud aunt and showing off my new nephew. Enjoy!

This is Blake while Elli was holding him - so happy!

She had to kiss him - and I caught it!

Elli just loves her aunt Becky! She loves her aunt Jackie too - she just doesn't always show it :) Sorry, Jack.

Trip to Becky's

Aunt Becky and her horses - Elli's feeding them a carrot! She loves the horses and has to say "Bye horses!" when we leave.

What's wrong with this picture?

And ofcourse her favorite thing in the whole world - the 'kit-kits'

I'm a new aunt!

On November 5, my little sister Becky, had her first born! Blake Travis Butler came into this world weighing 7lbs, 7oz and was 21 1/2 inches long! Both baby and mommy are doing great, and daddy is so proud! I love the picture on the bottom. I'm an aunt again! It's fun when it's your sibling having a baby :) I hope to get up to see him sometime this next week. Becky get's to go home Saturday afternoon (she had an emergency c-section, so she gets to stay longer....lucky), so we'll give her a chance to breathe before we go up and invade her home. I'm so proud of my sister! She's awesome! Way to go Becky! I knew you could do it!

Trick-or-treat

Elli loved trick-or-treating too. She was really quiet, but excited. She really enjoyed playing in the leaves a lot more than actually walking around to people's houses. I don't know whose yard this is that she's sitting in the last picture! She loved handing out candy I think more thans anything else! "CANDY!!!!!" is what she yelled all night. It was a riot!

My little flower girl

Elli was a little flower for Halloween! She thought it was pretty fun dressing up and dancing around! What a sweetie. These pictures are from the first time she put on her costume. I love the stripe tights! I made her little petals and petal belt out of felt and posterboard. I didn't come up with it myself :(

Return of Mitt girl

Who said anything about oven mitts only being worn on your hands?

Halloween pictures up tomorrow!

Elli and her BFF

Here is Elli and her good friend Jayden. Yes, she's been in bed with a boy already. We said this wouldn't be cute in 10 years.

Playing in the leaves

There were a few leaves in our front yard a week or so ago (there are many now), and I couldn't help myself. I couldn't wait any longer to rake the leaves into a pile and let her jump and play in them! As you can see by the following pictures, she loved it :)