Matchy matchy

I am generally not that into matching outfits for my girls.....it's not that I don't like them really, I think its more that I buy all their clothes second hand. If you could see how much clothing I have to dig through at the consignment sales you would understand how ridiculous it would be to try and find matching outfits!! Anyway.....my mother sent some adorable matching outfits for the girls for Christmas and yesterday we dressed both of them matching. I think that Maddie liked it, so we may have to do some more matching in the future! But here they are in their cute ice cream outfits. By the way, Maddie put her own head band on thus the 80's workout look.....that would not be the direction I would chose to have the outfit go if I had my say! lol

Goodwill toward men....and women

For the last couple of weeks we have been collecting things from around the house to bring over to Goodwill. We donate stuff every year, sometimes multiple times per year.....I think this year we made 3-4 trips down to Goodwill.....it's amazing how much superfluous stuff you can accumulate in a years time. We actually went inside today because we are on the market for a small ottoman for our den and what better place to find an inexpensive one? Well, they did not have an ottoman, but they did have this fantastic little desk. It's a little big for Maddie right now, but that gives her some space to grow. It's really sturdily built, just needs a little TLC and it's oh so adorable!! The best part.....it only cost $9.00. We also got a great hard back Madeline collection book in perfect condition for $1.00. There were more books that I wanted to get but we literally had $10.66 in cash on us and that was finding a dime in the car. We weren't really expecting to buy anything at Goodwill lol!! But we got 2 incredible deals and got rid of some unused stuff......I would count that as a success!!

Dressing up

I really like the stage that Maddie is in right now. She comes to me and asks for help getting into dress up clothes. She picks out what she wants to wear and then parades around the house being a cowboy (with a tutu and fancy hat....she needs a cowboy hat! lol) or ice skating, or dancing in circles. Its so much fun to watch her learn to pretend. And.....her hair is getting long enough that I can do cute things with it, she even kept a pony tail in for about an hour today!! When she was younger, even as recent as 6 months ago I kept wondering what she would look like with hair and I never could quite imagine it.....now I can't imagine her without hair and looking at pics where she hardly has any is weird!!

Here she is at 22 months (4 1/2 months ago) Much less hair!

Bye bye floor mattress

I love my girls. They make me laugh so often. We finally moved the mattress out of the den to make room for everyone who came over for Christmas.....and we bought a new couch with a bed inside, but I miss it already. We had SO much fun on that mattress. It was a little white trash looking, and we were a bit embarrassed when non family members came over, but it was the most fun. Goodbye mattress on the floor.

Schultz family Christmas

It feels like its been a long time since I've blogged. I just haven't the time right now. With Dan on winter break from school we have been spending our evenings watching DVDs (I can vouch that blue ray IS better!) which keeps me off the laptop in the evenings which is generally when I blog. But I figure that most people are enjoying their holidays and not blogging/reading blogs.

We had Dan's family over for Christmas brunch yesterday. There were 13 adults and 3 kids and although it was cozy, everyone fit and at least I had a great time. There was yummy food and presents (thank you grandma for all the play food that is currently ALL over my house!! lol) I am now the very warm footed owner of sheepskin slippers that I basically haven't taken off since yesterday. It was kinda sad when everyone left because the house was so quiet and it had been so nice having everyone together!! I got a good family picture, although Charlotte was napping so we'll have to photo shop her in there or something. It makes me a little sad that she isn't in it.

I have no idea the next time I'll be on blogger, but if I don't post before new years eve......have a happy and safe new years and I'll catch ya on the flip side.

Maddie's third Christmas

Maddie was still a little asleep when she got up Christmas morning. Normally she lays in bed for a little while after waking and enjoys her pacis before actually getting out of bed, but yesterday we were so excited we went and encouraged her to come out. She noticed all the gifts under the tree right away and when I asked her what she saw she said "Christmas tree," I'm sure it was hard to wrap her brain around everything and process it into words first thing in the morning!! After that brief exchange she noticed her trampoline and immediately said "tramoline" and went and jumped on it. Super cute!! She was a little overwhelmed with all of the gifts and ended up opening her stocking and then a couple of presents at a time all throughout the day.....she opened the last one this morning! She played all day yesterday with her new toys and jumped on her trampoline and watched her movies. Just like any other day the more time that passes the less clothes she has on. lol It's not an easy task getting pictures of Maddie because she is going through a I don't want to do anything that you want me to do phase which includes looking at the camera. Plus she was really busy with her task of opening presents and playing. Maddie's favorite Christmas items are her trampoline and her Mrs. Potato head. We are spending the day relaxing today although we might get out of the house and run a few errands.....even though its cold and yuckie outside.....we just need to get out a little. And I need to re organize some things to make space for all the new toys. Have I mentioned that we are running out of space in our house? Yeah, who knows where all this stuff is gonna go!! Wish me luck!

Baby's first Christmas

We had such a lovely Christmas yesterday!! Dan and I ended up waking up before either of the munchkins....but only by like 15 minutes.....I guess we were excited!! It was a tad bit chaotic and the house is still a big mess with toys all over, but we all had a really nice day together. Charlotte was well behaved all day and she enjoyed the wrapping paper and ribbons as much as the few presents that she got. She got a couple of Baby's first Christmas ornaments which I'm sure will be a lot of fun to look at over the years. Of course she had no idea what was going on, but she had fun watching Maddie jump around the house and enjoyed all the action that was going on. Her favorite Christmas items are the activity walker from her Grandma and Papa and the tag blankie that I made for her!! It's hard to believe that next Christmas she is going to be a year and 7 months old. That seems so big to me. It's also hard to believe that Christmas is over for another year. It always seems to go by so quickly. I was telling Dan yesterday that I think we should celebrate Hanukkah next year so that the festivities last a little longer. We'll see! lol

Christmas Eve

Dan got off early today!! Hallelujah!!!!! Granted it was like 5:00, but that is earlier than 6:30 for sure. He took the girls to blockbuster to get Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas and by golly it was actually in....surprised all of us! I made dinner while he was gone and then we all ate together, even Charlotte had some peaches. Maddie and Charlotte opened their first Christmas presents which were matching pajamas and then we gave the girls a bath together which is always a great time, especially when all four of us are in our tiny bathroom! I just finished putting Charlotte to bed and Maddie has been pretending to ice skate in the living room while watching her movie. Maddie will have books and bed at 8:00 and then Dan and I will be left to watch a movie, probably Love Actually (my favorite Christmas-y movie) put together a trampoline and get all the stockings stuffed and presents under the tree in preparation for the morning. It's gonna be a good night, and I am really excited about tomorrow.

Maddie knows all the words to jingle bells and up on the house top! It really is too cute....maybe I can get her to sing it on film tomorrow, and then maybe I can take a month to figure out how to post it on my blog. Yeah, it will take that long!! Dan has the next 8 or 9 days off and I am so happy to just be at home with my family and enjoy our time together!

Merry Christmas everyone! Have a blessed day tomorrow.

busy busy busy

Life has been chaiotic to say the least. We are still dealing with sickness....mostly runny noses, but I felt queasy last night. I've been baking and wrapping and doing last minute shopping and sewing and cleaning. What a crazy time of year this is!! This morning Maddie and I went to the library and got some new books and then went to the park to get some wiggles out. It was so stinking cold, we only stayed for about 35 minutes. We have some more cleaning to do today, but then thats it, I'm, not going to lift a finger until after Christmas day!! Well, I guess I'll have to lift fingers to cook our Christmas dinner, but that is way more enjoyable than cleaning lol. On the menu this year is:

Marinated, grilled steak (probably fillet.....I'll have to search our deep freezer)
Stuffed mushrooms with kalamata olives and feta (appetizer)
Broccoli gratin with swiss and parmasan
Twice baked cauliflower with bacon and three cheeses
Roasted sweet potatoes with red onions, rosemary and parmesan

And check this.....all of those recipes above are South Beach diet friendly, so we won't even be cheating when we have our Christmas feast!! I think they sound delicious, and although I would really enjoy some of my grandma's stuffing, I think these will hit the spot and hopefully help us forget about the normal holiday starches!! I haven't decided whether I want to make a dessert or not, but I still have time to think about it.

I finally got my sugar cookies to turn out the way they are supposed to. I found a recipe off the Food Network and had to substitute whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour (because that is all I bake with) but it actually helped to make the flour a little stiffer which made everything a lot easier. Maddie and I frosted and decorated the cookies a couple days ago while Charlotte was napping. I think they turned out beautifully!! I ended up sending Dan to work with 7 or 8 dozen cookies lol. His team really liked them, and I got to get the baking bug out of my system and get them all out of my house so I wouldn't eat them!! I ended up making the sugar cookies, Mexican wedding cake balls (or snowballs) with peppermint, and banana praline cookies which I was told tasted exactly like babana bread but in cookie form!!




I've been so busy, and we've been totally housebound because of the plague that I haven't really gotten a lot of pictures taken. There isn't really a lot of inspiration in my beautiful girls with bad attitudes and snot running from their noses. I hope to get outside more as we start to feel better.....although it is super cold out there.....but hopefully I'll capture something magical in the near future. For now I will leave you with Maddie helping me add another day to the advent calendar (I LOVE this advent calendar, so FUN!), a normal view of the girls "playing" together on the floor, Charlotte the beautiful and the view outside my window most recent evenings. Alright, I'm off to go grocery shopping for our Christmas feast.....wish me luck!!

Mean Mama

Yes, I'm mean.....but she loves it! lol

Crazy busy days

Life has been crazy the past few days!! I've wanted to blog, because there is so much going on, but I just don't have the time. Even right now, I am working on making sugar cookies (and failing miserably) and had a minute while I chill the dough. We've had Maddie's preschool Christmas production which was so stinkin' cute and hilarious.....I need to figure out how to post a video to my blog, you will be rolling when you watch it! I've been working on a few sewing projects, and finishing up the Christmas shopping which has taken me to Raleigh and beyond a few times. Dan and I had a date night on Wednesday and the girls had a babysitter and yesterday was Maddie's Christmas party lunch and gift exchange at school. This was her last week of school until the 6th of January so they had a lot to squeeze in. This weekend is Dan's 3 day working schedule which is not fun for any of us, and it has been rainy all week which is not fun for stir crazy kids.....although they both have colds so its not like we could do much. I have more baking to do.....I don't know why I am so terrible at the sugar cookies, I make a mean chocolate chip cookie! I have to finish my sewing projects which wont be done until Dan's next days off because I can't have a sewing machine and two kids out at the same time. I also need to figure how I'm going to fit 15 people in my house and what to feed them for Christmas brunch. Yikes. And we still have a couple things left to buy. I can't believe that Christmas is just a week away. Is it just me or has it gone by WAY too fast?? I'm hoping to post more this weekend, but honestly I don't know if I'll have the time. So, if you don't hear from me, have a great weekend and I'm sure I'll be around sometime before Christmas!

Little gifts

Turns out it isn't so easy to wrap presents when you have two little ones to look after. All the pretty, shiny bows and paper and ribbons are very tempting. And apparently it is very hard to resist ripping presents open. The next wrapping go-around will be done when the littles are asleep or in the safety of my closed bedroom!

coookies

Yesterday after dinner Maddie and I had our first attempt at making sugar cookies. This was the first time I had tried to make them on my own.....I made them with my mom growing up, but never wanted to put in the effort once I was on my own.....but Maddie is worth the effort! I thought it would be a fun activity with her because she likes using cookie cutters on play dough, so it would stand to reason she would enjoy cutting out cookies. Turns out I was right!! She did enjoy it although she liked eating the cookie dough better!! I was trying to get some of the cut out cookies onto the baking sheet and when I looked up she had a handful of cookie dough halfway in her mouth!! lol It probably worked out well that my baking sheets are shot and all the cookies stuck to them and broke when I tried to scrape them off.....the dough had Maddie germs on it. I ended up throwing most of them away......well, Dan ate half of them, and I was able to salvage a few, but not for giving away......Maddie can eat those. We're gonna try again in the next few days and this time I am going to use a different cookie sheet, and keep a close eye on my cookie dough monster. We'll just have to do it all in baby steps because we still have to frost and decorate the next batch of cookies.....at this rate we'll be done by Christmas day! Too bad I need these cookies for Maddie's preschool party on Thursday. Maybe we will get better as we go!!

Guess that kid

I bet it will probably be easy to guess which is which, but I think they look really similar in these shots. What do you think?

somethings gotta give

Dan is currently sitting in the car with it running in our driveway. It is a last ditch effort to get Charlotte to stop crying and go to bed. Both girls have had a minor cold that showed up last night and caused Charlotte to only have two 45 minute naps and Maddie to not nap at all today. Charlotte is over tired right now big time and woke up crying about 45 minutes after we put her to bed which was around 7:30. She basically didn't stop crying for 2 hours.....until Dan took her to the car to go for a ride where she promptly fell asleep without him even leaving the driveway!!

This is by far the worst it has been with Charlotte at least with regards to her going to bed. She normally goes to sleep very easily. I am really overwhelmed right now. It's really hard not to second guess yourself when your baby is so upset and crying and crying. Is she sick, like really sick? Can she breathe? (we sucked her nose out numerous times, and did a steam shower and have the vicks vaporizer going) Is her tummy upset, does she have gas? Is she hungry....we just fed her, but maybe she's hungry some more. Is she hot, is she cold is there something else wrong that we haven't thought of??? She is tired. That's all. But it's SO stressful getting to the right answer....even when it was our first guess 3 hours ago.

Charlotte is now in her room asleep......still in her car seat. It's safe for the car right?? Why wouldn't it be safe to sleep in. I'm beat, I need to go to sleep. It's probably going to be a bumpy night. Wish us luck!!!

Lights on the Neuse

Maddie and I just got back from some special alone time. Dan and I alternate taking Maddie on outings to spend special time together....usually involving sweets of some kind lol!! Tonight I took her to Lights on the Neuse which is a huge Christmas lights display spread out over a local farm with over one million lights. I had low expectations because we went to a similar place last year and it wasn't very good. But let me tell you, this place was fantastic!! We got there and went to say hello to Santa.....Maddie was not such a fan this year, but we said hello and merry Christmas to him. Then we went over and got on the tractor pulled hayride. There were light displays everywhere, snow men, candy canes, stockings, snowflakes, reindeer, wreaths, ginger bread men, farm animals, and there were random abandoned tobacco barns covered in lights, and that was all before we even got to the woods. The hayride went through about 1 mile of woods with lights over head, and displays on all sides, and get this......snow machines overhead that were making real snow!! There was music piped through speakers on the hayride, and it seemed that the tractor triggered the lights to turn on which is a nice way to conserve energy. Maddie's favorites were the barn that was erected from lights and the farm animals, and the duck pond made of lights with all the duckies. My favorite was the house front made entirely of lights that was two stories high and so, so bright. I'm serious; this was the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. The only negative thing that I can say is that it was freezing.....seriously; it was 32 degrees out, and so very cold! I think that Maddie was warm enough because when we got to the car and I took her jacket off her body was warm, but I can guarantee that her feet were cold and her hands probably were too even with thick mittens on. I did not dress warm enough and was SO cold I was kinda wishing it would end halfway through, and the hayride was a lot longer than I had expected.....45 minutes is a long time when your hands are blocks of ice!! lol After the hayride we went to the sweet shoppe that had fresh popped caramel corn, hot cocoa and homemade candies and treats and Maddie picked out some chocolate covered pretzels.....I really picked them out for her, but she didn't seem to mind (and I didn't even have one!). The girl loves her some chocolate. All in all it was a really nice outing. I wish now that I had brought my camera, but while on the hayride when I was trying to hold Maddie on my lap and alternate putting my hands between my legs for warmth, my camera would have been in the way! It was so cold!!! My feet are still a little cold and I'm wrapped up in a blanket in my nice warm house. I think I need some tea to warm me up. Merry Christmas!

P.S. Just in case anyone is curious, the Neuse is a local river that runs through our town and surrounding towns.....thus the name Lights on the Neuse. It's a curious name.

This is a picture from their website.

Wagon riding

When I asked for a wagon for Maddie's Christmas last year I could just imagine my two girls sitting in their little seats enjoying a ride together. Although I don't know that we knew for sure that Charlotte was going to be a girl at that point.....but I was always sure!! Anyway...I liked the idea of this wagon because in my mind it would bring my kids together even if they weren't all that into each other. You pretty much have to spend time with one another while stuck in a wagon sitting mere feet from one another. And so far my visions have come true. We didn't go far, just down the street to a neighbors house to borrow a ladder, but both girls got bundled up and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. I wasn't sure if it would work for Charlotte because her legs don't reach the bottom, but with the seat belt fastened it kept her in her seat. Maddie even gave pushing a try....and discovered that it's not nearly as easy as pulling. Poor Charlotte was a little skeptical about the whole thing, but loved he attention from her sister.

I am really tired this morning.....I stayed up too late last night editing Dan's last english paper and my brain is not forming fluid thought, which makes it hard to write anything interesting. I'm just glad that school is over for the semester.....it will be nice to have a break from the constant homework(I know it's not my homework, but it affects me for sure!), and I'm sure that Dan will enjoy more relaxing and getting to bed earlier!