Weekend Projects

We got motivated this year to try to create a more “finished” backyard.  We had always planned to put in a fire pit in the back corner of our yard, but haven’t found anyone who could make the connections for natural gas yet.  So, we’ve had a pile of pavers there for over three years in a dirt area that loves weeds.  I’m sure I have a better before picture than the one that follows, but I don’t have it in me to search through years of photos, especially when past years are archived on disks. 

The before picture from Emma’s birthday party.  Yucky weeds (it’s been much worse…you can ask my father-in-law).

You can see the pile of pavers here that have been there for 3+ years.  That pile made plenty of homes for little critters. 

I’m pleased to present the final product of three Saturdays of full-day work and part of today with some finishing touches.

We sill plan to add more plants in the future, but I am so loving the way this turned out.  It really was a lot of work, but it was so worth it. 

This weekend, we also decided that we needed to landscape the side of our house.  On one side, our neighbor’s house is about 10 feet from ours and our gate to the backyard is on the other side of the house, so we’ve just never done anything with it.  Again, it’s been almost four years here.  Apparently, we were feeling energetic this weekend? 

Our house is on the left in this picture.  Four years of weeds here.  I got half cleared while Justin went to go buy the rocks.  Then, our neighbor came home (I’m sure he was so thrilled that he got home in time to help us!) and he and the son of another neighbor (Max)came and helped me finish clearing the weeds. 

Max gave me quite the education about spiders, beetles, and potato bugs while we were clearing the weeds.  Definitely way more than I wanted to hear while clearing stuff and disrupting homes of critters, but since his mom is my gardening guru, I know it was in his genes!  Plus, he was digging with me, so who can complain about that?

 

We weren’t going for anything fancy here. This area really doesn’t get seen too easily, but it’s better drainage and NO WEEDS!  Bout time! 

Yes, we’ve been absent from any niece/nephew weekend activity for a few weeks, but with good reason!  Now we need some company to enjoy our backyard with!

I leave you with one final picture of Emma in the sand box today, just because she’s so cute.  The boys wouldn’t hold still long enough for me to get a good photo of them!

The area she’s in is next on the to do list….someday! 

Give Away Winner is…….

Research Randomizer Results

1 Set of 1 Non-unique Numbers Per Set
Range: From 1 to 23 -- Unsorted

Job Status:

Set #1:

8

 

That makes the winner: 

Andrea Johnson said...

I would get some teaching supplies for New Life orphanage.

May 27, 2010 1:30 PM

 

Congratulations Andrea!  I’ll be passing your email on to the rep from CSN Stores!  Have fun shopping. 

By the way, women blink more!  Thanks to all for participating.  Stay tuned, maybe we’ll get to do more give aways!

53 Mondays – Week 22

This week is a gimme.  I had an awesome recipe for this weekend, but we worked outside on our yard from 9 am until 6:30 pm.  At that time, I had no energy to go to the store, let alone to cook, so it was a cereal night.  I did, however, end up with an awesome patio/fire pit area in the back yard (picture to come later). 

Emma and I decided to make chocolate chip cookies yesterday to send with Dad back to his work home.  Yummy for chocolate chip cookies, but not a main course (unless you’re Emma).  ha ha.  Next week will be my yummy halibut recipe!

Mega SwagBucks Friday is Here

Today is Friday and that means Mega SwagBucks Day – where the odds of you landing much bigger SwagBucks go way up!  Go start searching. 

What’s Swagbucks?  - read on-

Swagbucks is an awesome way to earn prizes, including Target eGift cards or Amazon.com gift cards and more- just by searching the web.  It is FREE to join.  You earn points by searching the net, like you normally search, but this time you’re rewarded for it.  Once you sign up, you can refer friends and earn even more. 

I’ve been doing this for a few months casually, but more actively this month and have already earned three five-dollar gift cards to amazon.com! 

Go HERE to join and find out what great prizes you can get! 

GIVE AWAY!

Who doesn't like a good giveaway?

How about a 40 dollar Gift Certificate to CSN stores! Featuring products from over 200 stores, CSN carries everything from kids toys to hobo bags, as well as everyday needs such as LED lighting or cookware. I guarantee you'll find something you like. I was able to find several items I would love to have and could have easily spent hours browsing through their many products.

Here are a few of my favorites: 

Adventure Pack                        

Kids Circus Tent                          

Stadium Bundt Pan                     

Cookbook Holder                         

Football Bean Bag Set                

Want to pick out something for yourself? Enter today for your chance to win a  40 Dollar Gift Certificate towards your favorite CSN Stores product.

Entering is easy! Simply leave me a comment letting me know you are interested in winning!

Want extra entries?

- Visit CSNStores.com and let me know what product you would use the GC towards.

- Include a link to this giveaway on your blog, website, or Facebook/Twitter.  Return here to tell me you’ve done this.

- Comment the answer to this question: “Who blinks more?  Men or women?”

That’s it!  The giveaway will end at  10 pm on Monday, May 31st!  A winner will be chosen using randomizer.org

 

Mother’s Day 2010

We celebrated Mother’s Day with my nephew Cayden’s birthday, which we usually do, at Jered and ShaRee’s house.  The weather was beautiful and the kids were able to play outside the whole time, which they love. 

Before we left, Debby wanted a picture of her with all her boys.  Jered thought it would be so stylistic (I’m probably giving him too much credit…he probably thought it would just be funny) to lie across his brothers’ legs for the first picture.  It’s something, all right! 

Life List – Book of Me Entry

I’m not particularly fond of the term “Bucket List.”  To me, it focuses on the “Kicking the bucket” side and not the “list” side.  I prefer to think of it as a “Life List,” a list of things to accomplish in my life. 

I don’t think I could ever document all the things I want to accomplish in my lifetime for they are many and sometimes they change.  For instance, some times I want to walk on the moon and other times, I’m happy with the goal of making it to bedtime without beating the kids! 

My list today is a list of things that I would love to do in my lifetime.  Of the things on my list today, there is only one so far that I could cross off… #28. Swim with dolphins.  I included it on my list even though I have already done it because it’s just so fun that it would have been there anyway. 

Some of my list items aren’t totally specific, such as #22. Visit the National Parks.  I wouldn’t want to limit myself and say “visit 5 national parks” nor would I want to set a goal too high of “visit all national parks.”  I’m happy with how it is stated. 

What are some things on your list?  If you’ve crossed any off, what was your experience like? 

53 Mondays – Week 21

Emma’s 6-Year-Old Questions

Several years ago, I started asking my kids questions on their birthdays so I could document the changes in their likes, etc.  Here’s Emma’s most recent ones!

 

Tux Singing

 

This is my parents’ dog, Tux.  He sings to the TV every time this commercial comes on.  He does, however, only like the women’s voices.  Too funny.  My kids kept rewinding the commercial because it was so funny. My parents say the dog will run from anywhere in the house to the TV when he hears this commercial

Mr. T's Rap Song - Treat Your Mother Right

I really wish I had seen this before Mother's Day. So, it's a little late, but it is one of the funniest things I have EVER seen. I thought it had to be a joke, but it's not. It's Mr. T in all seriousness in some of the shortest shorts! WOW! I'm going to have to pull this one back out when I'm having a bad day, because I don't think you can watch it without cracking up! Enjoy!

Swag Bucks

Shamless plug to help me out! : )


What is Swag Bucks? You can get FREE stuff just for surfin’ the web and using the Swag Bucks search engine! Sound too good to be true? Well, it is TRUE! How fabulous is that?! Simply by changing over to using the Swag Bucks search engine, you could earn free stuff - like Amazon gift cards (my fave prize). Swag Bucks will randomly reward you as you use their search engine. You are rewarded with virtual dollars that can be redeemed for awesome prizes in their Swag Store. It’s FUN and EASY and FREE!

How do I win Swag Bucks? The main way to earn SBs is to earn them while searching. Just switch from Google (or whatever search engine you use) over to the SB search engine and you’ll be winning in no time! You will not win on every search - the wins are random. I generally win about 2-3 times per day and win any amount from 5 to 50 SBs (you can win bigger amounts, but I haven’t won any amount over 50 yet). Sometimes rather than typing a web address into my browser (places I go every now and then but aren’t in my bookmarks), I’ll search for the website first and get to the site that way (i.e. rather than typing in www.target.com to get to Target, I will search “target” and follow the link from the search results). I win quite often by doing that!

You can also earn SBs by finding Swag Codes. Codes are put out about once a day (sometimes more). Codes can be found on their blog, Twitter, Facebook page, in the Swidget, toolbar, or newsletter. The EASIEST way to find out when a Swag Code is out is to fan Engineer a Debt Free Life on Facebook - if you sign onto FB frequently. They will alert you when a code is out. Each swag code is only available for a limited time and is usually only active a couple hours.

You can also earn a little each day by having their toolbar installed - plus having it installed will help you search for things quickly when you need to! Another part of my daily routine is to go through the NOSOs (no obligation special offers) on their Special Offers page. I just hit skip/next/no thanks on all of them and at the end earn a SB or two. You can also answer their daily poll for 1 SB/day. Lately, all three of these (toolbar, NOSOs, and poll) have been adding up to about 3 SBs per day. But getting them every day certainly helps and it only takes 2 minutes to earn those!

Can EVERYONE use Swag Bucks? Unfortunately, no. Right now I believe it’s only available to residents in the US, Canada, and UK. I don’t think UK residents can snag the Amazon GCs though. Canadians can snag the Amazon GCs - for Amazon.com OR Amazon.ca. Right now the Amazon.com GCs say that they are “available to US and Canadian residents only.”

That’s all I can think of right now. If you have a question, please post a comment! I’d be happy to answer it and may even include it in this post! You can also check out the FAQs at Swag Bucks to learn more!

Of course, if you decide to use Swag Bucks, I'd love for you to join under me. Go here: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Jetplane01

Fun at the Windy Park

 

I took the kids to the park a few weeks ago because I had a few hours free from work.  We like to visit the parks in Daybreak (the community where we live) to find the ones that are the most fun.  We got in the car and went Eastlake Village to one we’ve been to before, opened the door of the truck, and realized that the wind was blowing like mad!  We had to stay, of course.  We just braved the wind. 

This “chair” spins you around using gravity or mom to make you spin faster.  Tyson LOVES this! 

I found a bench were the kids could sit and I wanted to take a picture of the three of them.  I could not get a SINGLE picture where they were all looking at the camera at the same time.  The only picture I got of Emma and Austin looking at the camera, Tyson decided that would be the one where he would stick his tongue out at me.  Nice, buddy.

  

53 Mondays – Week 20 Lemon Chicken

 

Emma’s Birthday Scrapbook Pages

These are duplicate pictures from those below, just put on cute paper! 

  

April