Just doing my part towards keeping the sugar producers in business

Last week there was WAY too many goodies in my house. I bought tons of candy and made lots of treats for Miss A's birthday and baked WAY too many sweets. I made cakes for a retirement party at Br's work, made mini cupcakes and a billion fillings/icings for a tasting for a potential wedding cake. I baked a total of 4 cakes, 84 mini cupcakes, and 35 normal sized cupcakes. I'm not even sure how much frosting I ended up making. It was a sweet week. How am I ever going to lose weight though? I just have birthday treats to make for Br this week and then maybe our household will take another sugar break.

A good day

I'll be open and honest, days can be pretty rough around the Melton house. There is lots of crying, shoving, biting, hitting, taking of things, and time-outs. We are still working on how to play nicely with our sister. Needless to say things can get a little tense around here when we don't get out much. A little while back I got overly excited about the reopening of the neighborhood pool (a place I hope to be able to escape to when we get a little stir crazy this summer) and I prematurely announced to Mr. E that the pool would be opening the next day. He immediately ran to his room and put on his swim suit and demanded to go swimming. Fortunately I had picked up a little pool the week before so I set it up in the backyard to help undo the damage I'd created. After we finally got over the drama of having to share the pool we actually had a really good time.

You'll have to humor me while I post WAY too many pictures of my kids. The occasions of playing together are so few and far between and I love to see my kids smile.

Can you tell who dressed himself?The best part of the day was watching Mr. E willingly share his favorite snack with Miss A. She loves him so much. It was such a genuinely good moment.

24,200 pennies saved are 24,200 pennies earned

There is something satisfying in saving more money with coupons than I spend at the grocery store.

Last week it was even more exciting to receive a $50 gift card to one of my favorite restaurants in response to a strongly worded letter I sent after a bad experience at one of their franchises.

But both those feelings were surpassed a couple nights ago when I got the find of my life. (It even beats the sofa chair we got for $1.07 on ebay but paid 100 in shipping). Thursday night's activities took and unexpected turn and in an attempt to pass some time until the kid's bedtime we ended up at Lowe's. For a year now we've been talking about getting a built-in fireplace screen since our kids treat the fireplace like a sandbox. I'm going to make what could be a long story short and say that we LUCKED out and got a special order screen that was originally marked at $242 for $5.05 just because it had been returned. Seriously so exciting! Our procrastination has never paid off like this before.

When we're helping we're happy...

...or at least busy.

So we spent pretty much ALL week working on storm cleanup last week. Although Br gets props for doing a great majority of the work the whole family got involved. 30 commercial sized garbage bags and WAY too many hours of yard work later we finally had our yards back. The silver lining is that we won't have to rake those particular leaves again in the Fall.

Bang bang boom big May showers

Some how the fun little April showers that allowed E to romp through puddles turned into one of the craziest storms I've seen. Ginormous hail. Sheets of water and it was literally raining leaves. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

This is the creepy fog that still won't lift.

This is the front walk way that not that long ago E went puddle stomping.

This is my back patio. It looks like the lawn comes all the way up to the back doors. Sooo much hail.

This is my lawn. There are now officially more leaves on my lawn than on the trees.

This is my roof. It looks like one of those roofs in Europe where grass grows on the top.

And can I please have a moment of silence for our little garden. It was coming along so well. Sad sad day.

Preface

If I was a reader of this blog I would be a little annoyed by the long dry spells followed by tons of posts one right after the other. Unfortunately today is not the day I'm going to correct that problem so in true flood and famine form, I present to you:

"Family Time"

Family Time: Chapter 1 -- Just the Meltons

At the end of April we were fortunate to have some time as just the Meltons. Thanks Br, E, and A for the good times. Here's a few pics from my favorite photo shoot during this time.

Right before the kids and I were going to leave town for a while we threw together a garden. E was super excited to use his dollar "shobul". And thanks to Br who took care of it while we were away, it was still alive when we returned. The real trick is to keep it alive long enough to get something out of it.

Family Time: Chapter 2- Albucrazy

The kids and I spent some time in Albuquerque helping out with a few things. Mission 1 was to have a huge garage sale. Despite the constantly changing crazy weather-- high winds, cold, hot, and even snow, mission accomplished. The greatest accomplishment in the sale was clearing out a little space in Pappy's house.

It was good we got that stuff cleared out on Friday and Saturday because Sunday my brother returned to the house to find water coming out the front door. Turns out the washing machine shut-off didn't shut off and so it was flooding the house. It didn't take long for us to fill all of the new empty space with the furniture we had to move off the soaked carpet. Thanks to A LOT of help we got stuff moved, the kids taken care of, and had a yummy dinner that night. The kids were troopers during the whole process. In fact the boys loved getting blown around by the huge fans we brought in. The best line from the whole experience went something like this. My brother to the neighbor "Ah my house is flooded, do you have any... um... towels?"

In our spare time during this first week the kids had a great time playing outside (of course when it wasn't blowing, freezing, or snowing). My favorite conversation during these times went something like this:

E: I digging for treasure. Look Treasure!

Cousin P: E That's cat poop.

E: No poop. A treasure!

Me: Ah E. That IS cat poop.

E: Oh (with a little frown). Poop.

He spent the rest of the afternoon excitedly finding me more cat poop.

Family Time: Chapter 3-- The sky train

One of the first things E commented on when we were in ABQ were the mountains. He kept saying how much he liked them and how he wanted to climb them. Knowing if we actually went on a hike I would end up carrying two kids up an incline I decided to compromise by riding the tram up to the top. E was really excited about riding what we ended up calling the sky train.

Anticipation

Flight 19 now boarding

The ride up

Discovering there is " snow!" and "A more snow!" and "A more snow!"

Adventures at the peak-- see if you can pick out E's walking stick that wasn't even as long as his leg

Cousin P

E and his lady bug friend

The boysMy sister was in charge of the camera and made sure to document every part of the trip.

After our mountain adventure we had a nice dinner and rocked out with a little Beatles Rock band.

Uncle Ch put together a drum kit for cousin P's birthday. Turns out my little girl really really likes to play the drums.