This Week in Chalk!

I did pretty good - a new chalkboard quote almost every day this last week! Enjoy!

Scrubs make me Happy!

Today I had a working interview! It felt good to put the scrubs back on but mostly being around the small animals made me A) miss working with the horses B) overwhelmed cause I feel like I remember nothing about dogs and cats. I think the interview went well and even though the clinic is farther away than I would like and it's only part time I am happy to get something over nothing and the people there were super nice. Here is the other thing: lately (as in the last oh two days or so) I have had this feeling that big changes are going to happen soon but I don't know what and I don't know what soon means. I feel that I have matured a lot in the last few years but recently I just feel even more like I am ready for a new stage in my life but I have felt this way before and I don't want to get disappointed if no big changes happen in the near future but I am doing what I can to be open to what Heavenly Father wants me to do and where He wants me to go so if those changes are in my near future I will be ready for them and know when they come. Anyway I don't know what is in my future or when the next phase of my life will begin but I hope I will be ready for my life to evolve when it does. I like where I am right now but I will welcome whatever it is that is in store for my future. Sorry for the very vague, very personal rant but I just needed to "talk" it out so I can sort all the thoughts and feelings running around in my head! Enjoy the rest of your week!

Last Week in Chalk!

So I made myself and cute little chalkboard last week (frame $0.25, glass $2, joy this chalkboard brings me: priceless). And I immediately started skimming Pinterest for cute quotes, doodles, handwriting, etc. I will be trying to change it every day so at the end of each week I'll post "This week in chalk" with all the week's happy quotes! Enjoy!
*If the quotes don't have an author please ask in the comments - I usually just run out of room and figure if I know then that's all that counts but now I'm sharing it with the World Wide Web I want to give credit where credit due! Also, check out my Pinterest for the quotes I use!
Quote #1: Thomas S Monson

Conference makes me Happy!

This weekend was General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! I love conference it is so inspiring and up-lifting. I love the atmosphere of being at home on your couch and getting a 4-course Spiritual feast! I didn't get to catch a lot of the Saturday sessions because I watched my sister's two kids Friday and Saturday while they were in Utah for the BYU football game. It was really fun to watch the kids by myself although Friday was the craziest day I've had in a really long time...maybe ever.
Let's just have a little rundown of Friday: spent the night at my sister's to Thursday night so I could get the kids' routine down so I spent part of the morning there then on my way home to get some stuff for the day away from home (basically food because thankfully none of my siblings are plagued with celiac and they don't have the abundance of GF stuff that I find at home) and let the horses out for the day, I took my sister to drop her car off for new tires then have her a ride back home. When I got back to my sister's her husband was home from work and they left shortly after I arrived. Little Miss was awake and Mister Man was napping so we hung out until it was time to wake up brother and eat lunch. After cleaning up we got ready to go hang out at My sister's until her car was ready and I needed to take her back to get it when I got a phone call from my OTHER sister which reminded me I was supposed to watch her kids at the rent's house while she did a photo shoot on the greenbelt behind their house...in 10 minutes. So thankfully the kids were all ready and we rushed out to the car and got everyone buckled in as I called my sister back and told her sorry I forgot I am on my way when she said it was actually a half an hour later than what she originally told me so that gave us a little wiggle room. And we were off like a herd of turtles and we got there right on time and Sis fell asleep on the way - Yay! We hung out and played with the cousins then after the photo shoot they visited and left and shortly after that we went to play taxi and drop my sister off to get her car back. I barely had enough time to do that and pick Mister Man back up from playing with his cousins before going back home to receive 5 more charges who needed to be watched while their parentals (my brother and sister in law) took their friends to a birthday dinner. So with 7 hungry, energetic children (two of which were being very clingy little babies) I tried to maintain my sanity (and not yell too much - which was difficult as I was downstairs feeding the two one-year-olds and cooking dinner while the rest were causing a ruckus upstairs where a movie was on and they couldn't hardly hear me unless I screamed which made me unhappy and caused a soar throat at the end of the night). All in all the 7 dwarves were well behaved and after the 5 left I fed the animals, tucked my two weekend charges into their PJs and we went back to their house to go to bed! Thankfully they both fell asleep in the car and stayed asleep as i transferred them to their beds. I got to relax for a little bit until my oldest niece was dropped off by her mother to spend the night with me just for fun. We couldn't find anything on Netflix that was both age appropriate and wouldn't make me vomit from corniness so we settled on Hachi. Seriously, tear-jerker not the most ideal movie for a slumber party but a really touching story (and yet another reason I need a puppy like right now). So we turned on the Tv after that to see if something more lighthearted was on before we slipped off to slumber and low and behold Fresh Prince was on! Annnnd it was the sole episode of that show that was not funny in any way (the episode where will gets shot and is in the hospital) so after thoroughly confusing my niece by trying to convince her that the show that has Will Smith crying in a hospital bed was once the epitome of awesome we decided on some Disney Channel show that I felt pretty safe about being entertained by because it lacked Ashley Tisdale and had the Mowry twins in it. I soon started falling asleep and ended my very very long day with a peaceful slumber in the oober comfy guest bed of my sister's house.
Phew. I am exhausted just reliving that day! It gave me a taste of how crazy busy and hard a day in the life of a stay-at-home mom can be and honestly I really enjoyed it - I felt like overwhelmed at times but like I could still handle it and I had fun, I enjoyed spending all day with munchkins. I can't wait for the day when I get to become a mother!
Saturday after a quiet day with the kids, their parents came home and picked them up and I got picked up for a hockey game with two of my sisters and their families. Sunday I enjoyed Conference at home with some killer meals! Then I went to sister's to eat Taco Soup for dinner and hang out.
Today I got back into my routine - woke up early(ish), fed the horses, took the girls to school then came home. I watched my sister's kids while she went to the doctor then I got picked up to go to the mall for an all day shopping trip with my sister and her kids where she helped me find my blouse for our family pictures this year! We had a great time, the kids behaved well and we got home in time for my dinner date with my grandparents to P.F. Chang's (yum)!
Now I'm settled at home for my last night alone before the rents get back from their trip to Seattle and the house is not holding back with the creepy noises erupting from downstairs. Watching crimes shows is probably not the best thing to keep me feeling secure but I like watching them so whatevs. Writing all this makes me feel pretty confident that I love my life and I am very very blessed!

Pizza Makes Me Happy!

Although eating gluten free does not make me happy, it has its advantages. For one, I don't wreak havoc on my intestines anymore and I don't eat a lot of junk food - chips, donuts, cookies, pizza, etc. And although it does not mean my body absorbs vitamins any more/better than it did before at least I discovered that I needed to supplement certain vitamins when I was diagnosed with Celiac disease. Anyway back to the purpose of this post I don't get to eat a lot of the junk foods and treats I used to enjoy on occasion which is good because it keeps me from eating stuff that is bad for me and only makes my struggle with weight loss that much harder but sometimes I just want a donut or a bakery cupcake so bad that it makes me really bitter and irritable. I think the worst part is that I was diagnosed at 18 so I knew full well how good all that "bad-for-you-food" tasted and I know any gluten-free option will never taste the same. Once again I've gotten off track where was I...oh yes! Gluten free options are extremely expensive and frankly not worth it most of the time but once in a while it is nice to eat some kind of semi-normal treat. Mom's Place Gluten Free is the best thing I've discovered thus far for eating gluten free - they have cream of chicken soup mixes!! Yeah, it's true! Their prices are reasonable and their products are definitely worth it! Cup-o-Cake: best thing since sliced bread but that's a discussion for a different day. ANYWAY I made a pizza crust from a Mom's mix the other day and I wanted to make the toppings BOMB since I don't get pizza often - might as well make it rock right? So I made a homemade BBQ sauce with caramelized onions stirred in, grilled chicken and a little cheese on top of the sauce and after it all cooked I added fresh sliced tomatoes from the garden on top and it was fantastic! Made me happy for like 3 days. Also what made me happy was the occasion - my parents were having my grandparents over for pizza and their weekly pinochle game :) I just love that they do that together! Have a happy hump day!

So much for that...

So apparently a weekly blog theme is not enough to keep me motivated to write but I need to figure something out because I need this little avenue to share my creativity. I am just not one of those people who does something cool and then thinks hey let me take a picture so I can tell the universe about it and probably no one will ever read it. Oh well, no heavy stuff for a while I have too much of that on my brain right now to bother the Internet universe with it. Just random thoughts and fun things, happy things. After all, that's the title of the blog right?

Things that have made me happy lately:
My grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary party and interviewing all the little ones for a video for it :)

Bauer responding to some of the training I've been working on with him :)

Riding my horsie :)

Ice cream and giant foam dominos :)

Crocheting cute hats for the winter :)

Playing guitar :)

Pomegranate tootsie pops! :)

Watching "I'm a Mormon" videos and freshening up my profile :)

From now on that's just it - what makes me happy and how I get happy when things are not going splendidly :)