Happy St. Patrick's Day!

So I tend to blog more around holidays. Holidays do make ordinary life a bit more interesting. I think St. Patrick's Day is becoming one of my favorites. I've always loved green - and it sure is nice to have a low key holiday - minimal preparations necessary. Just wear something green, & maybe make something fun to eat! Good people + good food --That's all you need!

Lily came home from school on Friday talking about a leprechaun making mischief in her classroom. Peeing green in the toilet, making steps out of the teacher's drawers & leaving green sparkles and gold coins lying around. She said they could make a leprechaun trap if they wanted to, but she didn't want to trap it. I was getting some things together to mail and she dug around in my little craft box and made this note on her own:

" Dear Mr. Leprechaun

I like what you are

doing, but my class is

makeing traps you

might want to

watch out!

Your friend, 

Lily "

I thought it was pretty creative how she used the brads to make them look like gold coins in a pot.

On Monday I was making a gingerbread house for Mike to take a photo of so Lily made the Leprechaun a irresistible little house. Not to trap him, mind you! For him to live in. Complete with a picnic table, rooftop seating, and a rainbow pathway to a pot of gold. Alas, he did not appear, but she and her classmates dug into it directly after school. :)

I put Sierra's hair into a ponytail to match her sisters'. Here she is checking out her do in the bathroom mirror.

And I got a little camera happy with my cute girls. I haven't really been taking enough photos of them these days!

I love you Lily & Sierra!

Best Cinnamon Roll Recipe

At least the best I've found! Very much like Cinnabon, and surprisingly quick and easy. They are a blessing from heaven.

We may or may not have made them twice this week... Well, we ended up with too much frosting the first time! (You don't need to double the batch) We had to do something to use up all that extra frosting! (It's a vicious delicious cycle!)

Anyway - here's the goods:

QUICK RISE Cinnamon ROLLS

INGREDIENTS:

DOUGH:

1 cup milk

1/4 cup butter

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1 envelope instant or ‘rapid rise’ yeast (~ 2 1/4 tsp)

1 egg

CINNAMON-SUGAR FILLING:

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

2.5 Tbsp. ground cinnamon

4 Tbsp. melted butter

1 Tbsp additional melted butter or coconut oil

CREAM CHEESE ICING:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup cream cheese, softened

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1-2 Tbsp. milk (if needed)

Mix with an electric mixer.

DIRECTIONS:

Combine milk and butter in a pan and heat until butter is melted and milk is warm. Let it sit until mixture is warm, but not hot.

Pour into tub of bread machine or bread mixer. Add mixed egg. Then add sugar, salt, and flour in that order. Scoop out a little indention in the middle and pour in yeast. Start dough kneading process. When it has formed a soft ball let it rise for just 10 minutes and then get ready to form the rolls.

While it rises use a fork to mix together the cinnamon, sugars, and 4 Tbsp melted butter to make your filling.

When the dough is ready, turn it out onto a floured work surface. Use a floured rolling pin to roll the dough out into a large rectangle, about 14 x 9 inches. Brush on 1 Tbsp melted butter or coconut oil onto all but 1/4 in of far long edge. Sprinkle evenly with your cinnamon sugar filling.

Beginning at the close long edge, tightly roll up the dough. Dab water along the far edge and then give the final seam a little pinch so that it seals. Cut the rolled dough into 12 equal pieces. Place into a greased 9 x 13-inch baking dish. Spray lightly with canola oil. and cover with a towel. Let rise in a warm place for 25 minutes.

Preheat your oven for 350 degrees F and make your icing. Once the rolls have risen, bake uncovered for 350◦ for 15-20 minutes, or until the rolls are slightly golden and cooked through. Remove and let cool for at least 5 minutes. Drizzle with icing and enjoy!

A few fun pictures

Just wanted to share something quick. A few recent pictures of my girls that I thought were fun.

Lily's class could dress up like what they imagined themselves like at 100 years old as part of their 100th day of school celebration. Lily really wanted to spray paint her hair gray - so we did (though it didn't show as well as we'd hoped - Oh well, we tried!) She actually let me take some pictures and hammed it up pretty cute. As I was looking through these I couldn't help but wonder if Lamby and Little Lamby would make it to when Lily is (close to) 100 years old...

100th Day of School

 (Proof we did paint it gray!)

 A spry little 100 year old!

 Reminding me of her Uncle Andrew and his toothless old person impression.

 In case you didn't know - Lily's taken to carrying, not 1, 

but 2 Lambies around the house with her much of the time!

 Love this little character!

 Lily with one of her best friend's - Chloe, and then with another little old lady at school.

Such a fun idea!

Not to leave out my adorable little sidekick, Sierra! Here's some photos of:

The best place to be on a winter day.

(from January - No snow on the ground right now - we're getting an early Spring!)

Peeked over and saw this cutie over here one snowy morning while Mike and I were fixing breakfast. Brought back memories of eating my cereal over the heat vent under our kitchen counter when I was in elementary school. And she looked so cute all smiles with her hair blowing - I had to grab my camera! :)

 I love this one!

 Ha ha! Love my baby girl!

We do do more than just hang around heater vents, promise! ;)

Just the cutest

Love Lily's boldness & cute moves. These girls have my heart! So great when they play so well together!

Too Fast and Too slow

Some things in life right now are just speeding by so fast I often wish I could just freeze them in their tracks and take more time to enjoy them or do more for them. Like my kids. I feel like they are growing too fast for me to teach them all the things I want to and for me to spend enough time enjoying all the fun stages that are changing all too soon. Some of their stages can't pass quickly enough... like potty training for instance, but you take the good with the bad - they're your kids! Other things just can't happen fast enough and make this limbo stage we're in feel like it's dragging on FOREVER - like finally finding a home of our own and moving into it, growing our income so we have more options for said home, and getting over one illness after another 1 or more of us have been having lately. --I could really go for a long stretch just feeling normal!

I haven't been blogging much because I have been sick a lot, and tired (and apparently really low on vitamin D!), and along with it all feeling kinda down... and when I feel down I don't really know what to say on here. On my blog I like to be real, but I also like to look on the bright side and share my best rather than feeling like I'm throwing a pity party for myself or complaining about all the things in my life that are getting me down, and worrying my friends and family unnecessarily -- or on the flip side giving the impression that all is well, and my life is perfect - which isn't true either. Life is a mixed bag of wonderful and woeful moments. But when I'm feeling in a thoughtful writing mood the feelings that are most pressing in my mind are what I automatically try to put into words, and some things are just too personal to put out there or sound stupid when you do because you know there are so many people out there going though SO much worse so even though my trials are hard for me I feel like a whiner sharing them on a public forum. I'm just not a good enough writer to always know what to share and what not to - it takes a lot of effort. And honestly being a mom is work enough for me each day! Hence the no blogging lately. But I enjoy blogging and want to record things our family is doing to remember and share, and I know I'm not the only one out there who gets down and it sometimes helps to share it. So this is my throwing myself out there again. Hoping to blog more often and not just on holidays and birthdays, but we will see... I'm hard enough on myself as it is to add lack of blogging to my guilt list - it is there, but I'm trying not to let myself feel bad over it :)

I'm so grateful for Mike and my wonderful daughters for their love and good opinion of me. I know I'm not a terrible mother, but I feel I fall short in so many ways. I really feel it -- overwhelmingly hard sometimes. At times I feel like such a fun sucker, like my smile is too absent, and like I'm barely present by the end of our sometimes gruelingly long bedtime routine...but even though I'm probably too hard on her, every night Lily gives me the sweetest hug and whispers "You're the best mom ever!" in my ear. I know it's not true, but it sure is good to hear! I love my kids so much and I want to be the best mom ever. And in those moments when I feel like I don't know if I can ever be the mom I feel I need to be, it helps to remember that they want me anyway, perfect or not - at least I'm there loving them and trying! And however picky and whiny and over-dramatic they can get - they really do love me and count on me and do better because of my efforts.

I really liked the perspective someone shared on a friend of mine's facebook post the other day - she said: "Kids need imperfect mamas so that they can learn how to deal with and relate to all the imperfect people in the world. I do not believe in mommy guilt. I try my best everyday, sometimes my best can vary wildly, but I try and I love and I try. I hope that my kids will see my imperfections and know that it is okay for them to be imperfect too. That they don't have to be perfect to be loved. This is a lesson that a perfect mother could never teach, only one who loves her children."  I thought that was a lovely and healthy way to look at this really hard and really important job we're doing. Didn't realize where this train of thought would end up, but since it ended up being about moms I'll throw in a nice video I happened across today. The next time I blog I'll post some cute videos and pictures and funny things my kids have been saying in between tantrums lately, because they really are adorable, and a post like that is long overdue! :)


Thank you to my Mom, and Mike's and my Grandmommy and Grandma for being such great mothers and for inspiring me! I'm so grateful to be Lily & Sierra's mom!