How do you sleep?

So cozily! Thought I would do a post about our sleeping arrangements. Here we have the kids bunks. They each have 1"&1/2 padding plus their sleeping bags which they have been sleeping on top of because it gets too sweaty to sleep in them. They all are adorned with the lovely  I Spy quilts mother Gunnell made them when they turned two. And each have their own privacy curtain.

Here is a peak inside Ava's "room"

Eleanors: school lunch menu(very important) and you can't see but she wrote "have a good day today" on her wall:)

Tru: his calendar. Alway set on the month of May(his bday) Turtis and Kermit his little friends.

These pictures look so grainy I don't know why. And here is our "bedroom"

Our privacy curtain

And this is how we watch movies when the kids are sleeping. Ear buds hurt my ear holes. Also Stu really enjoys his clothes hanging in his face.

Have a blessed sleep! 

My kitchen

So here's my kitchen. It's not very cute, but it's not like were glamping over here. It's functional and that's all that matters! We of course have some things we want to improve on but it's been working so far! 

Our lovely outdoor carpet came from Walmart our favorite store in the universe:/ Our large kitchen sink we ordered on Amazon. We rotate through our 7 gallon water jugs that catch the grey water, then we dump them at the dump station. We got one of those water hoses that are safe to drink from, but it still tastes nast even after we filter, so we have been filling our water jugs up at the rec center, then filtering them in our brita. Notice we have both warm and cool lights...so fancy...almost glamplike.

Stu made risers(?) for the table so that it would be counter height, we are going to figure someway to raise the sink up too because it kills your back to do dishes so low. He also made a little hanging rack thing out of PVC so we could hang stuff on it. There's nothing on it in the picture but the strip cord but usually there's a nasty kitchen rag or two hanging up to dry. The large wooden box has all my pots and pans/cooking gadgets and it weighs 5,000lbs. Probably.

My little stove top. My mom got this for us for Christmas and she got me the hot pot for my BIRTHDAY. Correction made mother. Love them both. I could not do dishes with out the hot pot. 

My little oven and outdoor cabinet. I got the oven off the classifieds page here for $40 score! I love it! Don't even miss having a microwave. We got the cabinet for Christmas from my inlaws. I love it!! We have a utensil drawer, bag drawer(has ziplocks, tinfoil, seran wrap etc) rag drawer(has dishcloths, hotpads,scrubbers) and my spice drawer! There's also a long pocket on the backside, I keep big tongs and spatulars in. Our first night here I maybe forgot to zip up the cabinet and this happened...

Cocoa powder errywhere..some critter had some delicious fun rolling around in it, then carried a tin of ginger into the woods that Truman found later that day. So fun! It made me think of the time like 7 years ago I was opening a box of cocoa powder and it exploded in my face. Up my nose, in both eyeballs, I thought I was gonna die. After a few minutes of old lady hacking I wiped my brown snot and cocoa streamed tear face and had a good giggle. Have a blessed day!!

First week in review

Whelp we made it a week and a few days in our new little home. It has been an adjustment for sure but we are doing good. The first couple days were a little chaotic just trying to get into the routine of things. All the kids got to school on time(or a little but early) so that is good. The drive to school really hasn't been that bad. Only takes about seven minutes and it's a pretty drive so I don't mind. I have figured out laundry needs to be done every two days, there isn't room to pile it up. We do dishes after dinner. When I say "we" really Stu has been doing them mostly, the kids dry and put away. My favorite thing has been my Hot Pot my mom got us for Christmas. Hot water on tap for days!!(well, hours)

So nice. Cooking has been fun. For breakfasts we have been having cereal, yogurt, bagels, oatmeal, toast. Sometimes tea if I'm feeling fancy. Lunches have mostly been nachos, sandwiches, fruit and leftovers. Really nothing much has changed in the food department except for how things get cooked. I haven't used my dutch oven yet, hopefully this week, but have been putting my double burners and electric oven to use. I love that thing! So nice to have for toasting/reheating and I baked a chicken in it tonight! See....so yummy.

Some of the other dinners we have had so far chili dogs, Salisbury steaks, tacos, pesto noodles, bangers and mash. Cleaning has been fun. Basically if anything is left out it's a mess. There really is no room for anything to be out of place. We are working on that. The kids like the throw their coats on the floor, leave papers out and that just doesn't work. It is a small place to clean, Im just using my little sweeper and dust pan but I'm gonna invest in a hand held vacuum because that's faster. We went to Florida for two nights this weekend, it was fun. When we got back Eleanor walked into the trailer and said "it's good to be home" and it is. Have a blessed day! 

Taco Tuesday

More like "burrrrrr"ito Tuesday! It was frigid and windy this morning! I didn't bring my crockpot with me because I wanted to utilize my wonder oven more. What's that you say? It's this amazing beanbag like box of sorts that will keep your food hot or cold for hours! My awesome sister shauna made it for me a couple years ago. You can find a pattern on Pinterest if you want, I'm too lazy to put a link. I'm sure you can buy them too.

All you have to do is get whatever your cooking to boil and squoosh it down in the bag, put the top on and it will continue to cook(it has to be something liquid or liquid covered to work) I have used it mostly to make yogurt(which I may do another post about) but today I had to try and make my refried beans. I got the recipe off of Pinterest and I make them about very two weeks. So good. Don't buy canned ever again! Here's the original recipe, I made a smaller batch today and used onion powder instead of an onion.

Put your dry pinto or black beans in a pot. Cover with water( I probably halved the recipe above)so used about 5 cups.

Add the sthpithes...

Bring to a boil(took forever because it was windy and freezing)

Hurry put the lid on and shove it down in the wonder oven so it's nice and cozy.

Put the top on. And wait for like 7 hours!

OOo they are done so drain the bean juice water(but save some to add in later) add butter...

And mash them....like so...

So fun. Add some bean juice until you get the right consistency(you can make bean juice popsicles with the extra..so good you guys)

Masterpiece!! Now make some tacos and burrrrritos like these. If you can..delitchous..

And the best part is later when you live in a tiny trailer and there is no where to hide from everyone's farts. It's really great. Have a blessed night!!

First day/night

We did it! We finished up cleaning and packing our house(mostly) yesterday and set up camp here at the lake around noon. The weather was perfect 65 and sunny. The kids kept themselves busy riding bikes and finding rocks in woods while Stu and I set things up and tried to find places to fit stuff in. I think we have too much stuffs. He doesn't know I took  this. Push it! Real good! Nice calves btw.

Eleanor our chef and made us all delitchous samwitches for lunch. 

After we ate and set up we went back to the house and sweatily cleaned some more. We got back to the trailer around 6 and ate some nutritious Popeyes chicken. We let the kids watch a movie and Truman fell asleep. We read scriptures, said prayers and everyone else went to bed at 9. Party animals! We were all so tired. 

Eleanor's bunk mates all ready for bed!

Around three in morning Truman got up and had to pee which was fine because so did I, we ran to the bathroom and back and fell back asleep. At around 3:30 he comes over by our bed and says"Moqui farted in my bed. Its stinky" I woke up with a knot in my shoulder, but Ava "had the best sleep of my life". I took Molly on a vigorous walk down to the lake she was hacking like a smoker grandma the whole way. I took this lovely picture....

When we got back Molly puked some freakishly white foam all over my rug. What the? Thanks dummy! Too much excitement I for her to handle I guess.

After that we all went to church and had a blessed time(sincerely serious)Then we went back to the house and finished up cleaning. After we and ate all the ice cream from our freezer on our toy tote table. Right before dinner. Because you can't waste good ice cream. 

I'm hoping for a smoother nights sleep tonight, and hopefully I can get everyone to school on time tomorrow. Wish me luck and have a blessed night!

Buh-bye buhbbles:(

Last bubble bath of my life!!! Jkjk, for the next little while anyway. To make it extra dreamy I used up the rest of my rosey pink grandma bubble bath(don't worry I have another bottle for future times-thanks mother) You know those smells that instantly slap you back to childhood? This is one of them for me. I don't really know why because my mom always used Calgon(take me away)you know the one that made the water Hawaiian ocean blue? It was always my dads go-to gift for her. She must have used the pink stuff at some point. Or maybe I'm just a grandma. Either way I'm going to miss taking baths while we're in the trailer. I might have to take one in our giant sink.

              Bye sad little bath guy...

Have a blessed life creepin at whoever lives here next;)

Totes getting ready!

Its starting to get real around here! We have been packing and getting ready for our big move into our little trailer. Packing is the worst! I went into Eleanor's room and saw someone had written on the mirror with dry erase marker "Moving is awesome!" I thought, "At least someone's having fun!" Then I asked who wrote it and Ava said it was her and that she was being sarcastic. Hehe. She is excited to move into the trailer just the whole packing/clean in isn't her favorite. So last week I started putting clothes away in the kids shoe organizer of a closet. I found it at the thrift store for $1.50 and it fits perfectly in the only spot I have room for it in the trailer!! Huzzah!! It actually holds a lot more clothes than I expected. They all have multiple clothing options, socks, jammies, underwear and room for some shoes. It helps that the girls wear the same size in everything but shoes. Each kid also gets a tote of toys that fit nicely under the bench seat in the trailer.

I almost feel like there's too many toys already, but we will see I guess.

We also have a bar for the clothes that need to be hung in our "bedroom" area of the trailer. I just folded a bunch of dresses over hangers so they don't hang too low. For the mom and dads clothes we got these convenient totes with a door! Once again so surprised how many clothes I can fit in there! We each have a smaller basket also for socks and underwears. Here's our totes and my basket, still have to get Stu a basket. Also you can see he didn't fold any of his clothes...

I think we will survive in the clothing/toy area. I may regret packing so many, but I can always put what we don't end up using/needing into storage. Have a blessed day!!