As my daughter likes to say, "Whew-fta!"

Now we have located our camera battery, only to find the charger has gone missing! As Kaisa likes to say, "It's disappeared!" Everything lately, from her stuffed doggy to Olivia, has "disappeared." Oh, woe is me! I guess I will just have to be descriptive to draw the picture that I am unable to take.

My three-year-old and I have taken to tea parties every afternoon. And we have fun. We send the last school girl out the door at 11:10a.m., potty the dogs, tuck the baby in for a nap, and we settle in for a candle light, fancy ol' tea party in the kitchen...minus the tea...and minus the fancy, actually. Except for today there was green tea for me. On the menu today was, green tea for me, apple cranberry juice for her, buttered wheat toast, and steamed fiesta vegetables. I liked it. She was a little leery about the veggies. First, she was keenly interested when she saw the kidney beans and thought they were jelly beans. Then she tasted them. Then gave em to me! Needless to say, with such of a skimpy tea, we had to add more food within a few minutes of its completion. For me, a 3 Muskateers bar. For her, peanut butter/honey on potato bread toast, and more juice. For this week our house has become exceptionally messy. What we do then, to escape having to look at it, we avoid the dining room table. We clear this old butcher block cupboard we have in the middle of the kitchen for a center island (for now. We move it back and forth, for variety's sake, as it so moves us, from under the bay window in the kitchen to the center of the kitchen as a center island), wipe it shiny-clean, and lay out our spread. It usually takes about 1.5 minutes and we're set! I've taken to drawing lately (I've been blessed with too many inspirations lately..first the home care business, then the ideas for a kids' book finally materializing after years of bubbling on the back burner of my mind...I even had the title, just wasn't sure of how I was going to write it...now suddenly I've rediscovered my passion for drawing and would love to illustrate my own book...which, I might add, will probably take me years to actually complete, and I'm perfectly content for it to be that way). Kaisa tells me to draw friends for her (poor deprived girl...she has to be by herself with no siblings to fight with for a couple hours every day) and we chat and chat and chat! I've discovered that she is a very, very tenderhearted little girl, despite the fact she has been driving me insane since the baby was born with her sudden demanding ways. I've really come to enjoy her and her very, very good sense of humor and bubbly belly laugh! We ignore the phone (unless it's Joni, my hubby Eric, or Becky...or my sister Kaisa or friend Eija...maybe, maybe if it's someone else...for the most part we let it go). We ignore the dogs...we usually have one at each doorway, staring at us eating as dogs tend to do. And Kaisa has learned to ask for "dinner" along with our tea party.

So has been our life in our busy little household of 8 people, 2 dogs and a telephone (to connect with those that we aren't already tripping over)!

And now, off to "window shop" into other people's blogs to catch up!

I'm having withdrawals!!!

I am so missing my camera! I went to use it a couple weeks ago to find that the battery was gone from the camera! I think that the girls were using it and the battery died so they put the battery charging. I found the charger but no battery!?!?! I have had many potential pictures I have wanted to put on here!

Finally got out a few times for marketing our business. We are first trying to use all free marketing (flyers, internet) since we really have no timeline that we have to be started by. Of course we want to get going but we don't have any big expenses yet, so we don't at least have huge pressures of getting going. If anyone has any ideas of how to get our name out to people, especially the families of Senior Citizens, let me know! We've met with a couple people too to get our name "out there". One was at a Senior Center, and we set up a couple hours in March where we will meet with people to answer any questions and maybe even set up some clients for service if they are interested. Then one lady we met with is from Senior Outreach. She will just refer people to us if their needs meet our service.

Baby has finally started to take official naps, though not every day does she take a true nap (like a couple hours) but many cat naps that usually end right about the time I decide to put her down. She is a lot happier than she used to be. We started her on Zantac about 1 1/2 weeks ago, I think. I'm pretty sure that's been helping her. Just to make sure it wasn't just a coincidence and she didn't just reach that point where she was turning the corner on her own, I will probably take her off of it for a few days after she's been on it for about a month or so and see how she does.

If anything else interesting has happened, I've since forgotten! I'm finally cleaning my basement since I went on bedrest in September!!! Yippee!!! Now that's true excitement!

Gotta Love Good Sales!

I am just so pleased to announce that I actually went shopping!!! I mean, honest to goodness shopping at a shopping mall that I used to frequent quite frequently many years ago. A shopping mall that has been updated considerably since my last visit there, which I didn't think was that long ago.

My oldest daughter and I had been talking for quite some time about going shopping and buying her clothes that she actually likes and that actually fit her. With her money. And we went.

First, I must say, we stopped at Goodwill (second hand/thrift store). It's actually one of those stores (in case this is just a MN store) where people donate clothes, toys, furniture, etc...like Salvation Army....a place that I regularily donate our clothes that are still decent and just don't fit anyone or just not anyone's style. This Goodwill was one I hadn't ever even been to to donate. We needed to find a dress for my daughter to dress up in as Harriet Tubman. We found a darling Harriet Tubman dress for $4.99, so I was pleased we found it so quickly for pretty cheap. Holli decided that she wanted to quickly walk around and just see what was there before we continued on to the mall. We immediately found tennis shoes, SKETCHERS, I might add, that were still brand new, for...*drumroll*....$4.99!!!!! Holli did not have tennis shoes and the only shoes she had were my $0.50 hand-me-downs from a garage sale that were cute but had cracks in the bottom. We were SO delighted! I had worried that she wouldn't find any tennis shoes on sale and of course I wouldn't have been able to make her pay for them anyway since I feel that the basics, such as tennis shoes, are our responsibility to buy as they are needed.

On to the mall. Did I mention that this is something that we never do? We proceeded to find 75% off sales throughout JCPenney's...on to the name brand stores (I never buy name brand stuff except for 75-90% off from the outlet mall a couple miles from our house). She found some very good deals from Abercrombie, Wet Seal, and lastly, Aripostle! From there, she found pants and sweatshirts for $5.99 each. I noticed the two sweatshirts (one of which I bought for myself) were $40 and $60 regular price. I was quite proud because she conducted herself beautifully, drooling over some things but putting them back for only one or two items from the drastically reduced tables. She did chose to pay more than I would have for one shirt but it still wasn't that much and she loves it and it looks very nice on her. I told her that it's her money and she can chose how to spend it. I did, of course, give her little reminders (because she is 11 and doesn't shop very often at all) like, "Remember, if you buy that shirt for $17...you could buy 3 of this kind for about $18-19 total from this 75% off rack...but one really good piece is worth more than 3 cheap ones that you may not wear...so you chose how you want to do this!" and she did well! She came home with 2 pairs of pants, 3 tank tops (for layering under shirts), a sweatshirt, and 3 other shirts for about $60, so about 9 items that averaged for about $6.67 apiece. Not bad!!!! She still had $20 she could have spent. She desparately needed this stuff. She's grown out of all the stuff I did get her for the start of school, which wasn't much, and she otherwise has hand-me-downs from a neighbor girl and her cousin that she's recently outgrown. It's really nice stuff but she's outgrown it...so it was time for us to go shopping!!! We had so much fun! Then, even at Walmart, where things are typically pretty cheap, she even looked and compared prices until she got the best price for two little lip glosses.

Well, back to work!