What's New?

I have sat down I don't know how many times to write this post, but never seem to get anywhere.

Its been in the works for months now. We will be moving. Sometime. Sometime in the next couple of months, hopefully. My in laws bought a new house and will be moving out of the house on the main part of the farm. We will then be their new renters in their old house. There are a few things they are having done in their new home, and then we will be changing a couple of things in our new home before we can all move. It will all be for the best I believe. The biggest bonus in this whole deal??? Dylan will be in a school district that we actually like. I wont have to worry about getting him enrolled in district that we don't live in and driving him to and from school each day. We will happily be in a decent district. And we couldn't be happier about that. Its a big weight taken off of our shoulders.
So in preparation for this move, whenever it happens, Ryan and I have already bought new carpet and are looking into flooring for the dining room and kitchen. We also bought new living room furniture. We didn't really mean to buy it so early, but we went into a local store one day just to look. They had something on sale that we liked, and somehow we ended up buying it. They are holding it for us for a month. But we are almost up on that month. So we aren't sure what we are going to do once we run out of that time slot, haha! Wait and see I guess. But yeah, we had no intentions of buying that day. But I'm not all that picky and neither is he. We saw something we liked and just went with it. Easy!! Love it.
And in the last 2 weeks, I have been packing stuff around the house. The dining room is ready to be moved. Everything is packed. Actually the dining room is where I am storing most of the stuff that I am packing. So that room is kind of a mess right now, but it works. I'd say that about half of the stuff in the kitchen is packed. Aside from food and the stuff that I use on a weekly basis. Ethan's room is in boxes, aside from his clothes. But there wasn't a lot in his room really. Pictures are off the walls and things are about to get bare around here. I still have quite a bit of stuff that can be packed ahead of time. But I am getting there and it feels good.
Last week I went to empty the attic. I got some stuff out and downstairs. But before I could finish the half of the attic I was working on, I caught a glimpse of something on some boxes in the corner. You know what I THINK it is??? A shedded snake skin. Am I sure? No. Am I going to get any closer to find out? Hell no. Snakes terrify me. TERRIFY!!!! I hate snakes I hate snakes I hate snakes!!! Needless to say, I am done in the attic. I told Ryan that he is going to have to drag all of those boxes out and then I will deal with them. But you can bet your ass that this girl is not going back into that frickin attic. I am DONE!
So that's been the latest happenings here. I am doing my best to get everything that I don't use on a weekly basis packed away. When it comes time to move our stuff, I want to be ready. I don't want to be packing at last minute. It is much easier to do it room by room now, when I can have time to go through things rather than at the very last minute. So there will only be one room in this house that is cluttered. There is too much stuff in this house to be waiting until the last moment too. I would drive myself crazy rushing around.

4/52

Short post. I played around with a long exposure and the fireplace to get my week 4 picture. Here are a few...

And here is the one I like. #4 of 52

Weekend+half week review

Well I had originally planned to share a photo or 2 from Ethan's birthday, but there are other people in each one, not just Ethan. Oh well no big deal. In your head, just picture a 2 year old boy trying to blow out 2 yellow candles that are stuck into 2 cake balls, and then shoving halves of them into his mouth. There's your pictures!
It's been a relatively slow week. We are finally back to our normal routine. Yesterday was my day to be in class with Dylan. It went well, it usually does. After those mornings though, I am so stinkin tired! We got home a little later than we normally do. Ethan went straight to sleep and Dylan went to his room to rest. I laid down on the couch and nearly fell asleep..again. I say again, because that has been the name of the game these last few days. The day before yesterday, I just fell asleep after the kids went to their room in the afternoon. Then, this morning, I fell asleep while the kids played. I can't help it. It is almost uncontrollable. I didn't sleep long this morning, but I do remember dosing off.
On top of being so tired, I have had little patience for anything. But that is probably because I am so tired. I'm sleeping halfway decent at night, so I'm not sure where all of the exhaustion in coming from. I don't think it helps that while we haven't had much of a "winter" it has been so dark and gloomy. We haven't had that many sunny days. It does take a toll on your mood. It hasn't been all that cold or snowy, but rain. Rain every week. Cloudy nearly every day. I would take cold and sunny any day over this pattern of above average temps and gloom.
As of Tuesday, Betty, the new kitty has been with us for a week. Things are a bit more settled now between her and the other cat, Max. For days, Max would run under the couch anytime he saw her. And there were a few times where we had to carry Max to the litter pan so he could do his business and eat dinner. It was a bit ridiculous. So one day, I got out some of the baby gates that we had, and blocked the back of the couch so he couldn't run under there. Sounds mean, I know, but ya know what? It worked. It forced him to stand up for himself. Now, they semi get along. They aren't curling up together for naps or anything, they halfway play together and they no longer growl and hiss at each other. So after only 1 week, Id say things are pretty good between them.
That's all for now. Hopefully I will be back tomorrow.

My attempt at cake balls

For Ethan's birthday I wanted to do something a little different. I normally order a cake from the grocery store bakery, and have been pretty happy with this particular store's cake. Until Dylan's birthday in October. It just wasn't great. So I was either going to bake my own cake, which didn't sound great, or try these cake balls. I'm usually up for trying different ways of doing things, so cake balls it was. I looked online for ways to do it and hopefully get some tips on how to do it better. I looked at a 'recipe' from Bakerella and one from a blog called Kelly's Korner.
I bought chocolate cake mix and vanilla icing. I also got candy coating from Kroger. I baked the cake and then used my food processor to pulse it and crumble it.

After it was crumbled, I mixed in the icing. I noticed while searching around for the recipe, that there was a bit of variation on how much of the icing to use. So I started with half of the container. I only ended up using about 3/4 of it. I just kept mixing it and trying to form it until it came together just right.

Then formed it into small-ish balls and placed them on a cookie sheet to go into the fridge to cool for a while before the whole candy coating part. I don't remember how long I let them chill. A few hours. Then came the coating. I had an awful time with this. I only melted a little bit at a time in hopes of preventing it from hardening before I got them all dipped. Well it still happened. It was a lot thicker than I imagined it would be. I don't know if I did something wrong or not. I followed the directions on the package and it was quite thick. I did manage to get them all dipped but due to the chocolate being sooooo thick, they weren't the prettiest things in the world.

You notice I tried to add color to them by adding colored sugar. After doing 2 of them, I realized that it wasn't going to work well, so I stopped. They don't look pretty do they? But you know what? They tasted great! Interesting too. The hard candy shell on the outside, and the soft, fluffy cake/icing in the middle.
When I served them at Ethan's birthday party, I served 2 per person along a scoop of vanilla ice cream. That was a fantastic combo, let me tell you! YUM. I had taken 2 of the cake balls and stuck candles in them for Ethan to blow out. I will mention his party a little more in another post. It was a small get together, but I didn't have it in me to go big.
I would like to try these again. I just don't know how to get the chocolate to be thinner. That is the problem.

Project 52...3/52

A little late posting this, but been busy!


Dylan:

Random post

First, I am tired. Not sure why really. Just physically drained. I haven't been doing what I should be doing, because I feel so wiped out. Second, my patience is so very thin right now. But I think that goes back to the first part.

Ethan's birthday party is this weekend. I am keeping it small. Ethan's Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents. I just don't have it in me to go big. I feel guilty about that, but at least we are having something for him. I finished the cake balls for his party today. Don't know what those are?  Will post about them later.

I am hungry. I ate lunch. But still hungry. And a little thirsty.

Tuesday afternoon we adopted a cat from the shelter. Back in the fall one of our 2 kitties passed away. Since then we have missed having that second cat around. We are definitely a 2 cat household. But no more than that. So we had been looking at the local shelters in the surrounding counties via Petfinder.com. We had been looking for a while but weren't sure if we should get one. We were all set to go get one last week, but found out she had been adopted. So we kept searching. We came across another listing for a couple. So we went to go meet them and make a decision. We met 2 cats and made our decision. Her shelter name was Bootsie, but Ryan re-named her Betty.

She seems to be adjusting well for only being here for a couple of days.

Dylan has been a handful lately for some reason. But I am hoping that it starts to get better since he is finally back to school. Between the long break and then that stomach bug we all had, he had been out of school for near a month! So I'm hoping it gets better.

The dog is sleeping...and dreaming. She is barking and growling in her dream. I can't imagine what that dog would have to bark at. So it must be an interesting dream!

I am making an easy dinner of hamburgers tonight. But I get bored with just plain hamburgers. I just cant seem to find an awesome hamburger recipe. Why do they taste so much better in the restaurants?

Happy Birthday!

Ethan is 2 years old today. He had his 2 year check up too. All is well and he is constistant with his growth curve. Tall and skinny.

Happy Birthday Ethan!!!