My Little Life

Whoa...been FOREVER since I've done a "Real Time" post, no?! So, here's what's happening, in real time, in my home... I have a sleeping Baby Girl beside me. No matter how big she gets, she'll always be my Baby Girl...or Baby...or "the babe". Being the youngest in the family means she'll always be saddled with that nickname. Mr. Wonderful is in the kitchen...I can hear papers turning, I think he's working on our taxes. I used to get excited about taxes and getting a little money back every year. Then, my husband became part owner of an LLC and suddenly, my tax return DISAPPEARED and the money that we show as "income" on our income taxes is NO WHERE near what our actual income is. Something about having to claim the business profit as our income? Anyway, now tax time makes me anxious. I loved the simplicity of the days of Turbo Tax and early February filings. Sigh...such is life. The rest of the house is quiet which leads me t...

VERDICT: School as usual. :( All winter long, I've longed for snow. We'd get a dusting here or there...maybe a few inches, then it would unseasonably warm up and melt away and we'd be left with brown yuck. Bare trees, brown grass, small brown piles of snow on the corners...blah. Christmas came and went with barely a snow flake in sight...for this born and bred MinneSOOOOOta girl, Christmas just doesn't feel right without a beautiful new blanket of sparkly snow. (Pre-Christmas photo below...) January came and went with barely a flake. Even the bitter cold (which I can HAPPILY do without!) was no where in sight. It was bizarre. February passed by...this time WITH the bitter bold, but, you guessed it, NO SNOW. Around the middle-ish of February, I said..."You know what's gonna happen? JUST when we're all ready to welcome spring, we're gonna get DUMPED on." And guess what? Here we are...March 2nd and looking forward to spring and guess what...

Used to be that every birthday/anniversary/special event I would pound out a touching and somewhat witty post related to said event. Then...well, then life happened and I started working full time and spending my daytime hours in front of a computer screen and, well, suddenly blogging felt more like a chore and less like a hobby and before I knew it, a special event would pass and a few days later I'd be all "Huh...I forgot to write a post on that...". Then, last night, my biggest bro sent me a text that said "Where is your blog post about my first nephew's birthday?"...and I was all, "Oh shoot. I forgot another one.". (Look at me, with my "Smile for the camera, kids." speech goin' on...) And so, without further ado, lemme catch us up on...well, apparently on the last year of big events! (Interesting...my last "event" post was Pal's birthday last year!) Grab a cozy seat and cup of coffee...you might be here ...

I have a little story to tell you...a story that made me realize I really don't like to be wrong (I mean, I rarely am, so, you know...)...or, more so, I don't like to be thought of  as being wrong when I really know I'm right. Here's the story: I stopped at Subway to grab a bite to eat after a hospital shift. I had a small, random Visa gift card balance that I had found after going through my purse and so, at checkout, I asked the cashier if I could use it. She affirmed that I could, if I knew the balance (I did) and so, she ran the card...then whipped out a handy little calculator and proceeded to tell me I owed her an additional $2.75. All I had was a 10 dollar bill, so I handed it over, she sighed a little, thoughtfully grabbed me my 7 dollars then reached for the change dispenser thingamajig and started to disassemble it. "Oh gosh", I interrupted, "Would it just be easier if I gave you the change?" "Um. Yeah...kinda." So, I st...

If you happen to enjoy my mishmash of photos on Instagram ( @mama_m ) then you've likely already seen this news. However, for those of you that don't peruse Instagram...boy, have I got a treat for you in this blog post! The remodel. Yes, I'm working on a "Before and After" post...I'm dragging my feet a bit because there are a few things we still need to do, but I think I'll do it anyway and hope that maybe you won't notice our missing backsplash or lack of appropriate floor transitions. However, in the meantime, there IS something I want to show you (missing floor transition and all)...remember the barn door plans I talked about? Well, it was something I tucked away on a wish list when we realized we had worked ourselves into a custom door. But then, we need more wood work stuff done and we decided, what the heck. Let's just do it. And it was like Christmas ALL. OVER. for me! When I came home from work the day this beauty was installed,...

Have you heard of this thing called "Pinterest"? Oh...you have? Silly me. ;) Anyway, the Mr. and I were trying to find a good chore checklist to help with our kids getting their chores done. We're terribly inconsistent about making them stick to their duties and there is so often a "it's not my kitchen night" battle happening, that we decided we needed something in writing. And a little positive reinforcement. Back to aforementioned Pinterest...I scoured Pinterest, trying to find just the right checklist...but they were all just...well, not right. Pretty, yes. Some organized by day, some by week, some by room, some by the phase the moon was in, or the correct alignment of the stars...but nothing that was quite what we were looking for. So, I took it upon myself to create a little something that worked for our family. And this is what we came up with (for winter, anyway...summer will be different chores...like, no shoveling snow, for instance!), which ...

Wow. I have been SERIOUSLY remiss in documenting the goings-on of our home on my blog! It's been over three weeks since my last post?! Why, I never... Anyway...can y'all believe another Christmas has come and gone? I can't. It makes me sad...Christmas is my most favorite time of the year and it goes by SO STINKING FAST!! In fact, my Belle said, the day after Christmas, "Mama, Christmas is so slow to come and goes by way too fast!". Yes, my love. It does. But, go by too fast or not, it was wonderful! I absolutely love the traditions, the big, loud, crazy Christmas celebrations, the fun and family and getting together and ALL THE CHRISTMAS EVERYTHING! One thing I did not love...missing "midnight Mass". Somewhere along the line we missed the memo that my beloved, cherished, most looked forward to mass was changing from midnight to 10pm. I had always been SO PROUD of our church for continuing to celebrate midnight Mass...for honoring sweet B...