Stutzman, Family of Five?!?!

Monday, January 7, 2013

BzzAgent Post Alpha-Bits Cereal

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I've blogged about BzzAgent a few times before. This time we got selected to try Post Alpha-Bits cereal. The kids love this cereal. I would highly recommend it especially for kids that are starting to recognize their letters! All three of the kids really enjoy chowing these down. They are sweet and tasty. I would compare them to frosted cheerios in taste! Pretty yummy! We haven't tried them with milk since the kids like to dig through them looking for letters it would be pretty messy! Another perk is that the Super Why characters are on the box. And in true fashion the kids enjoying eating things that they relate to...Also there was a fun Super Why mask to cut out of the back of the box!

Back to the same old stuff

We had such a nice time the last two weeks with Mark home. Besides all the responsibilities of life it would be so nice to have him home all the time! I'm sure eventually we would be clawing each others eyes out but really that's besides the point. It was a long year last year and he was gone A LOT for work. A couple fires and lots of work up in NE Washington. We attempted to spend a night with him in a hotel in Newport WA. That didn't really end up so well, I don't think we will be attempting it again anytime soon.

Mark got a Kindle Fire for Christmas so we set up Skype last night. It will be fun for him to see the kids every night no matter where he is...well, as long as where ever he is has wifi. I got a new sewing machine and I am over the moon with it! Its so nice and such an upgrade from what I previously had. I can even monogram now...Holler!! Jackson went back to pre-school this morning at Mrs. Margies, he was excited to go. We are also having a mini blizzard this morning. However, the snow level is supposed to bump up to 5200 feet and rain by this afternoon. Weird weather.

I made a special FB page for my cookies.... I think I will do a special football cookie for super bowl Sunday then on to Valentines day. I'm enjoying this and excited to see where it leads me. I still haven't completely decided on a price yet. I don't want to charge too much but I don't want to short change myself either. Such a dilemma.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Happy New Year!

Mark told me I need to make a better effort on keeping up with our blog...I'm going to try...no promises! We had a nice Christmas vacation traveling over to the west side of Washington for a week.

We left Sunday before Christmas and headed down to Carly's brothers house South of Olympia. Stayed there two nights and had a fun Conklin family Christmas on Christmas Eve. We woke up Christmas day to a white Christmas...nice wet west side snow. We packed up the jeep and headed to Carly's Mom's house just outside of Graham. Had a nice Christmas day there and spent the next two days with them. On Friday we headed North to Sammamish to be with Marks family. His Mom and Dad came up from Oregon as well as his Nephew Brayden. We had a nice time visiting with all our family and were glad to journey back home on Sunday. We have about 3 inches of snow and its cold! Kids are having fun playing with all their new toys and we are enjoying having Mark home with us this week! We will all be sad to see him go back to work next Monday.

I have one cookie order for this Friday for a baby shower! I'm hoping to have a few more here and there to keep me busy! It's been fun filling all the orders for the Christmas season. I think all said and done I did about 30 dozen cookies for the holidays!

First round of rip and tear! They enjoyed their poprocks!

Anna loves her babies and her stroller!

New years day brunch...with special "apple pop"

All these new toys and they have more fun with a box!

Happy New Year!!!

Thursday, August 30, 2012

mmmm, maters.

I picked up a bunch of tomatoes from the post office this week...Another joy of living in this small town. Anyone who has extra produce can leave it at the post office for other people to take! I have left a few zucchini so I feel okay taking a few maters! I have 7 or 8 zucchini plants so I've got plenty to share! Anyways, back to the maters! I love having stewed tomatoes on hand so I got to work. This time I decided to go the Italian route.

Blanching!

Yum! Walla walla sweets from our garden, garlic from my Momma's garden, oregano, parsley and basil!

Only 4 jars this go around! Totally worth it for the homegrown tomato taste...nothing better! Hopefully the generous soul who is dropping off the tomatoes continues to do so...and hopefully I get to them before anyone else! LOL!!!

Progress so far, still need to paint the trim.

I'm horrible at picking paint colors....The sample swath always looks good but, until you paint a whole wall you really have no idea how its going to look. Mark came home late and didn't say anything about it...So not sure what he thinks...I think it will come together once the trim is painted and the floor is in. But, if it doesn't the good thing about paint is you can always paint over it!!

Wrong end Waylon. Goofball.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

This weeks projects!

At bountiful baskets this week we got something new, in fact I didn't even know these existed. Champagne grapes.

They look so cute and tiny but they were kinda a pain in the rear. Jackson was the only kid who would eat them. Anna proceeded to squish every single one I gave her and Waylon wouldn't even touch them. Apparently he likes his grapes to be normal. So it was a rather large container and I knew Jackson wouldn't be eating them all by his lonesome. So I decided to try some fruit leather. I also had a mix of mango and oranges frozen in the freezer so we got some variety!

Plucked!

Cooked and strained!

Grape puree

Mango - orange puree!

The yield, a bit of grape juice and fruit leather!

The boys won't try them...but Anna likes them!!

My other project this week is a face lift to the laundry room. My super wonderful Aunt Debbie hand-me-downed us a new back door for our home. You never realize how crappy something is until you get a new one! It's a major improvement at the least! Anyways, this new door sparked the realization that yikes, this mud/laundry room could really use some improving. Mark said to me one day, "We should paint in here and put in a new floor."...JUMP...I love it when he is on board with projects...on board as in he doesn't mind if I change stuff! So the kids and I ran to Home Depot on a mission to add some life to the room. The boys helped me pick the paint color by saying yes or no to the options I gave them! (; We ended up with a Martha Stewart color...can't go wrong with Martha right? So here is my progress thus far.

Before shots...I did a bit of scraping on the loose paint.

The new door

It's important that I work on projects by myself because it would irritate anyone else...I don't clean before....I just continually move messes around until I am all done then I put things away. The fly strip, so gross.

Finally decided I needed to take the door down and strip it. Another project entirely. But, it's coming along! There are so many layers of paint on it I don't think I will make it to bare wood but maybe a happy compromise. Today's goal is to figure out what color I want to paint the trim. I have a few options of left overs in my basement, surely one of them will work! Once all the painting is done we are going to put in a real floor too, no more concrete! More pictures to follow!

Thursday, August 23, 2012

The battle will never end.

Where they are supposed to be sleeping.

Where they are actually sleeping....on the floor next to our bed lies Waylon...

And, Jackson on the couch. I guess I should just be greatful they are sleeping and that Anna hasn't figured out how to climb out of her crib....yet.

Cabin fun!!

The kids and I took off on Wednesday and made the well worth it 4.5 hour journey (which turned into about 6.5 but we wont go into that) to my Dad's cabin west of Yakima. This place was always a second home to us growing up and I have tons of very fond memories. It is such a joy to be able to bring my own kids here as well! My Mom, Step-Dad and Grandma MaryAnne came over and spent the day with us on Thursday. Somehow I missed taking any pictures of this day, shame on me! About the time they were leaving Mark rolled in and we had a nice evening with just the 5 of us! We spent the next few days enjoying the water and deck with our family. My Dad and his GF Jan were there along with my Brother, his wife Becca, and their son Colton. It was nice to get away!