IT'S HERE!!!!!!!!

 Goodbye dear pint sized fridge that gave up on us, causing us to lose gallons of milk and countless fruits and veggies.

 Hello! new fridge that we've waited oh so long for.  Your a little big for the space, but we're working on fixing that.  I'm just SO GLAD your here.

To celebrate the new fridge we had mini pizza night.

Update

So a while back I posted about the terrible refrigerator set back, and my plan to try and pull in enough money to stay on track.  Well I did it!  I made enough money to cover the unexpected and still get our bulk foods order and meat for the family.  I am so excited that I didn't completely crumble under the smell of rotten food and lack of functioning appliances.  If there was a refrigerator God, he must be really mad at me.  We are still living without a regular fridge (the new one gets here next week), and instead have two mini fridge's.  One is too warm and the other freezes everything.  I can't tell you how excited we are for the new fridge. It's going to be like living in the lap of luxury compared to what we have now.

Annie's new hair clip

 I'm not sure what happened Saturday, but Texas and I sort of called it quits for the day.  We worked in the yard Friday cutting down yet another tree (and hopefully the last one for a while).  The plan was to cut up the tree Saturday and get it bundled and out of the yard, but when we woke up we just couldn't do it.  We don't get a lot of down time here, and Saturday we were both just too tired to move.  So we sat on the sofa almost all day.  Reading, watching movies, and I did a little sewing.
I haven't touched a needle since we got the house (almost 6 months now).  It was so much fun to just sit and not worry about the house, the mess, the dishes, the laundry, the yard.  I'm not sure what made me think to sew something, but now all I want to do is make more hair pieces for Annie, and ignore the long list of things still to be done.

Baking

Stress baking took on a whole new meaning last night.  In a furry of disaster I ended up baking a double batch of brownies from scratch while simultaneously cooking that nights dinner and lunch for tomorrow.  The good that came out of last night was my daughters ingenious idea to give the brownies away.  We wrapped them up two by two and took brownies to all our neighbors for dessert.  Then Annie played in the street with all the neighborhood kids till bed time.  What started out as a rough night turned out pretty amazing.  It was awesome to see Annie running around with all these kids having a great time.  There are around 12 little girls ranging in age from 0-8.  I feel a little sorry for the two lonely boys.

First foods

Elsie is ready for food.  I must have lost track of time, or I didn't feed Annie till much later because it seems so early.  We are starting her on cooked egg yolk thinned out with breast milk.  So far all she does is stare at it and then make funny faces.

The best part was her outfit matched her food.

Happy Fathers Day

DADDY! DADDY!!! A tree fell in our yard!!  

This is how we stirred the Daddy from bed this morning and lured him outside.  Once outside he found his two girls sitting inside his fathers day present.  I felt bad for putting him through all that, but it was worth it to see the look on his face when he walked around the house and found his girls sitting inside his dream wheel barrel.   Yes, my husband has a dream wheel barrel, which he now owns. 

I love you Texas.  Thank you for being my husband and the most amazing dad to our girls.  You're amazing.

When the good news brings bad news

So our fridge died, and yes a big part of me was SO EXCITED.  I wanted the darn thing to break for purely selfish reasons.  It's so freaking small, and feeding a family of four out of that tiny little box is near impossible when you cook the way I do.   Everything from bread dough to Kefir is communing a little to closely, which is probably why the box isn't working.  The milk is souring, the kefir is digesting and the bread dough is fermenting a little to fast for me to keep up with it.  So what does this mean for my precious family?  The things I planned on buying this month for our food will have to put on hold until the next shipment / butcher date which come around every 1-3 months depending on the company.  Unless I can bust my butt and pull in an extra $300 this month (which you can bet I'm gonna try and do).  You see, I have this master plan for my family that I have been painstakingly working on for MONTHS.  We're cutting out the middle man.  Saving money by buying directly from Bulk distributors and small local farms.  Say goodbye to Whole Paycheck, Trader Joes, Schnucks and Shop n' Save.  Everything from Dried goods and Beef to Milk and eggs will be purchased without the local grocery stores insane prices, and be of better quality.  
Unfortunately all my research might have to wait another couple of months to bear any fruit.  The money I was stashing away now belongs to Home Depot.  The sucky part is?  We don't even get the fridge for another two-three weeks.   And the massive amount of work that has to be done before it gets here, seriously cuts into my money making opportunities.   We have to move a floor vent, take down a partial wall, strip wallpaper, float a wall and paint all before the fridge can get put in.   Thus I'm officially going into hyper drive and most likely won't be posting anything for a while.  Unless I decide to cut out sleep.  Fear not, I will take pictures and post when I get the chance. Wish me luck!

Gidget goes under!

 Annie made a major leap in the water today.  Not sure what happened but all the sudden, she was under water swimming around.  I was ready to start crying I couldn't believe it.  No bubble, no water wings, no raft.  Just Annie and her goggles under the water.   Now, the tricky part is she can't hold her head above water on her own, so I need to be right there, but we are so close to having an independent swimmer!

After the pool, she wanted to go straight into the bath tub to "practice."

Back to work

 Our Girls a still crammed into my little quarantine coop.  Try as we might, we just haven't made much progress.

Texas got to work this weekend breaking down the old coop to start the reconfiguration process.  

This is going to take a while.

In other news, our Refrigerator has decided to quit on us so guess what?  I GET A NEW FRIDGE!!!  We're still trying to find the best deal, but if I can find just one more coupon for Lowes we'll have ourselves a full size fridge!    I can't tell you how exciting this is. Living out of our mini fridge has definitely been eye open and we've learned some great lessons, but I am so ready for a normal refrigerator.

Goodbye mini fridge.

The awesomeness of Annie

The girls

 Annie and her cousins Sadie and Ruby are extremely close.

 Annie and Sadie play barbie, wrestle and run together.

 Then there's Ruby who loves to play house and be a fashion model. 

Together they are a tangled mess of giggles, screams and shrills.

Happy Baby

Over the last few weeks, Elsie has cheered up quite a bit.  She only screams when out in public, in the car or at home every other third hour.  This is improvement. This is monumental improvement.  I am slowly introducing green foods into my diet and I can't tell you how amazing a piece of broccoli tastes after three months of no green foods.  I eventually hope to have a baby that doesn't feel the need the test out her vocal range while enclosed in a small space operated by a rather tired stressed mom.  Till then I will enjoy each moment of silence and every smile.

Looking like a mom

I have been slowly squirreling away money over the last few months to buy a new outfit for me and some shorts for Annie.  All Excited I took off early in the morning to go shopping.  It was not a pleasant shopping experience.  Elsie cried the whole time, trying on clothes was traumatic and nine times out of ten whatever I tried on didn't fit or looked terrible on me.   But somehow I managed to find one good outfit for me and a few shorts Annie.  I was so excited to wear my new clothes and show Texas.  An outfit that hadn't been spit up on or stained during any sort of home renovation project.  I wasn't squeezing myself into a pre-baby weight pair of pants or drowning in maternity clothes.  I felt so good.  Then, kid free I go meet Texas.  His response?  "You look like a nice mom today." ??? I wanted to cry.  I love Texas, but when it comes to complimenting me he falls terribly short.  He tried to fix it by saying I looked like a really nice soccer mom and I got confused do I cry or laugh?  I didn't want to look like a mom.  Thank goodness he's able to make me laugh no matter what the situation, or I'm not sure my incredibly hormonal self would have made it through the night.