First Night in the "BIG Girl Bed!"

Well, tonight is Ardyn's first night in the twin bed! YAY! She is pretty cool with it. She's been in a toddler bed since she was somewhere around 15-16 months old, so really I am not worried much about this, except that it's a longer fall. We didn't get bed rails because I am cheap most of the mom's I talked too said that by the age of 2.5-3, their kids didn't fall out of twin beds. We will see. I took EK's advice and put the toddler mattress on the floor alongside the twin, so that it would pad her fall if she hit the hardwood. It will be an interesting night. She'd better not break an arm or I will feel like CRAP.

Today was really a fairly productive day. Last night I went to one of my monthly scrapbook nights with friends (I attend two a month, each at different local churches) and I started Marek's "birth" scrapbook. I did an 8x8 for Ardyn's Birth, and am doing the same for Marek now. He's 1, it's time I started scrapbooking him, right? Poor guy! I was a little pissed perturbed that I picked up $65 of Photos from Wal-Mart (that's what happens when you procrastinate and forget to order your pics in time to scrap them, you have to pay 1 hour prices! Eeek!) and for some reason the black and whites were just "off" in color, and the edges were often torn or smudged. If I had the patience or time to deal with them and wait for reprints, I might have done something about it. Maybe someday.

Today I took all the scrapbook supplies back to mom's (where my old bedroom is now my scrapbook room!) and put them away. Marek and I got up and snuck away. Because I had Ardyn's seat out of the van and three of the stow and go's folded, I was able to also get my twin bed from mom's and load it up to bring home for Ardyn. But I realized that the protector I had for the mattress was NOT waterproof (uh-oh) and luckily I texted MIL and she was in town and could pick me up one, which she wonderfully did for me and drove it to my house so it was here when I got home. That was awesome of her.

While at my parent's house, my dad was going to take a look at my front brakes, because the dealership had told me during my oil change last week that I needed new brake pads and rotors, and quoted me $340 for the front. Holy Crap. This from the girl whose dad has always done her mechanic work and oil changes, and I just provide the $20 brake pads. Jeez!

So I had already bought 2 Brake pads and Rotors just in case we needed them, and when Dad looked at them he decided that he was just going to change them all out today. Thanks Dad. You are so awesome. You saved me like $250 bucks. I love you!

So Marek and I tried to make ourselves useful, and eat up leftovers and cookies at Grandma's. Then I stripped both spare beds upstairs and washed the sheets, and ran the vacuum in the upstairs hall and the bedrooms for her. I wanted to feel useful, and since I wasn't accomplishing anything at home, I get that itch to be DOING something. I had only brought one diaper (since we were just supposed to be running out there to put away scrapbook stuff, and ALL the diapers were in the washing machine at home) and I luckily had two spare sposies in the van.... because we were there for SEVEN hours, and Marek pooped THREE times. Jeez.

*speaking of that, let me go put those dipes in the dryer or he will be naked tomorrow!*

Okay, first load in the dryer, PUL Covers hang drying, and Second load of diapers doing their first cold rinse. I don't want to forget that I need to go back down in about 10 minutes and add soap and start their hot wash. Ah yes, Soap. Where in the HELL is my soap? Seriously? on Thursday I ordered $287 of laundry soap. I know, you are having a heart attack. I nearly did. But I was out of OxyPrime and OxyBoost, which I use for all our laundry. Never in the past have I had to purchase BOTH at the same time. Some of you may have been here a while and know that I buy laundry detergent in bulk, which saves us upwards of $100 per year, and is HUGELY awesome for our carbon footprint.... no millions of plastic bottles! We use ONE bucket of laundry soap per year, and ONE bucket of Oxyboost per year. Their weight is around 43-50 pounds per bucket (each has a different density) but they are essentially 5 gallon buckets. I originally started using Charlie's Soap and Oxyboost, but about a year and a half after using Charlie's, cloth diaper vendors started dropping it and discussing issues with buildup, rashes, and pretty much it became no longer recommended in the cloth diaper industry. I had always been perfectly happy, but because I was also wonderfully in love with Oxyboost as my stain fighter, deodorizer, and sanitizing agent for diapers, I thought I would try Oxyprime. And by "try" I mean that I jumped in with both feet and bought a whole 5 gallon bucket (that's how much I trusted their company (Natural Choices) and therefore, I made the switch instantly and have never looked back since.

So by buying the detergent in Bulk, I save over $100 a year (that's just the savings for detergent, I have never done the math for the savings I get for buying Oxyboost in bulk instead of buying OxyClean or OxyClean Baby {ca-ching!} but I know that is a HUGE price difference.)

The only downside (and I mean ONLY) of buying in bulk, is the staggering cost of the gigantic bucket once a year. It's something like $115 plus $17 UPS shipping for the detergent, and a bit more for the oxyprime. But I know I am saving money in the long run, doing awesome things for the planet (eco-safe products, one container a year, bazillions of bottles that I am not consuming from the grocery store that had to be packaged, labeled, trucked, stocked, etc.) and awesome things for my babies and their little cloth diapered butts. Not to mention that neither I (or the kids) have had any type of allergic or eczema reaction to the products like I used to have prior to switching. I had been happy with All Free and Clear, but I knew nothing else, and as soon as I started using it on my clothes, I was so happy to have no unwanted residues and chemicals on my clothes! Ahhhh. So we choked out the $287 for detergent. It never comes at a "good" time, but it has to be done. It's just one of those necessity things that we have to have.

*Down to add soap to the diapers*

Oh, and the reason I started on soap in the first place?? It's not HERE yet. Seriously. I am freaking out. I must check the back porch like 500000 times a day looking for my UPS Man. It's bad news. Almost EVERY time I have ordered the soap, it has arrived in 24 hours. ONCE it took two days. It has been 4 days. I ordered it on Wednesday. It's Saturday night. No Soap. I am freaking. We have NO Soap and laundry to do and I literally just used the last two scoops of soap on the last two loads of diapers. As I was coming back upstairs, I started to worry more about the whereabouts of my soap, and I remembered that they told me they would send an order confirmation to my email.... I checked both my email addresses.... NOTHING. Uh-oh. So, I can't check my order status online, because when you purchase that large of a quantity, you have to place the order via phone because they don't have that large of quantity on their website. So I think "I will check the bank account balance!" and then when I go look at the bank, I see that it was never charged. Hmmmmm...... something is not right here?!?! So I am a little upset and I am thinking that it's only fair that when I can finally call them on Monday, they pay to have it OVERNIGHTED to me because it apparently hasn't been charged, shipped, etc. Let's hope they agree.

I wish I would have followed my gut and called them on Friday when it didn't arrive. Now I have to wait till Monday and I have no laundry soap. Grand.

I wish I knew where the remote was for "my" TV, because I think I am missing my nightly Nanny Marathon on Nick and Nite. That's not right. Oh! I found it, it was under the bed. Ahhhh, Fran, I missed you!

So I put the twin bed in Ardyn's room when we got home from our family "Easter" dinner (evan's side had a meal tonight :) And I was super excited to get out the sheets and comforter that I bought like, hmmmm, a year and a half ago, for her big girl room. Soooo fun. She has three sheet sets (one I already had and two I bought on sale, they match her comforter) and a reversible comforter that's super cute from Target. Now I can't wait to put some underbed boxes in her room to store her spare bedding and free up some space in our linen closet! Yay! I also upgraded our towels and re-did our bathroom recently. I had such a problem, we had so many towels that I felt people were using them carelessly. I would use the same two towels for over a week, yet when I needed to do laundry, there were like THREE LOADS of towels. It's just that if there are clean towels everywhere, *some people* who live here seem to think they need to use them constantly. It bugs me.

So, I sold the shower curtain, valance, 4 rugs, and about 15 "newer" JC Penney Home Towels to a friend of mine on Facebook. I'd had the same bathroom theme for 10 years, so I figure I got my use out of it. Then I downgraded the towels we have had for 12 years to "rags" and gave them to Evan for washing cars, etc. I replaced all those towels with 10 new towels from Target, four new handtowels, a valance, and a shower curtain. It wasn't very expensive at all, especially since I picked two striped towels and two striped hand towels, and then just got the rest of them solid colored.... and bath sheets now cost $3.76, when the previous JC Penney towels were like $10-12 each just 5 years ago. I love that now they don't really sell bath "towels" in that stupid small size that won't even wrap around your body.... and all towels seem to be "bath sheet" size. It makes me happy. So anyway, By selling all the old things to a friend, I made a big dent in the cost or replacing them. And by having about 1/3 as many towels, I have less laundry, and there isn't the temptation to use towels just because they are clean. (I hope! LOL.)

Well, I still have a ton I could talk about, it's quiet here, but I should be reading, or I should watch the nanny and do some crocheting. I haven't crocheted since winter, and I have lots of things I could be doing, lots of yarn to use, a new book that I received as a Christmas gift.... so maybe I will do a bit of that before bed. :)

Next week is Marek's 1 year appointment, which I am excited about because he missed his 9 month appointment because the physician's office forgot to make one? The next night is my Pampered Chef show, the first one that I have hosted since I retired from being a consultant back in 2005. I am excited about it! The rest of the week is pretty uneventful, and I would really LOVE to do some bread baking, some pizza dough making, some sewing, and some yardwork gardening. I am *patiently* (okay, not at all) waiting for my husband to build my square foot raised bed garden. The plans are drawn up and laying here next to me on the bed, along with Mel Bartholomew's book "All New Square Foot Gardening." The recycled lumber is in the driveway, the tools are on the porch, and the site is measured and marked out in the front yard. We are putting it right inside the fence so I can be with the kids and garden at the same time, and right by the composter, and right next to what will *hopefully* be the site of a rain barrel someday soon. Can you believe it's almost May! yay!