Favorite Things

Here are some pictures of our favorite things:

My favorites lately:

My lilacs that were sticks a few years ago (I planted them two years ago-so it's their third season) are blooming like crazy. Last year I just had a lot of leaves and only two blooms. So excited! I love them!
I've been making this recipe for cookies that uses white beans in the place of butter. This is my second time. They are SO good. They also use whole wheat and hardly any sugar. That's about the healthiest cookie there is!
My garden is planted. I made three rows of corn this year and Andy is SO anticipating eating it. So are the girls. We love corn! I also planted 12 regular tomato plants and nine cherry tomatoes. Cucumbers, yellow and green squash, watermelon, and lettuce. YUM! Now I just need to keep up on the weeding of the garden. I've decided that each Monday, I'll have to do it.
The trees are budding out. The same kind of tree is right next to this one and has been all open for a week or two. This one is a little slow. The sky is beautiful today between the rain.
The strawberries are getting ready in the garden. Elizabeth is most excited for that. She eats them all!
Elizabeth's favorite thing lately is doing crafts. She brought home a reminder from school today that next week is Teacher Appreciation Week, so she wanted to make something for her teacher today. She made a dolphin shaped "iron bead" project. She gives them away as coasters. (The dolphin shape came in a set and it had a picture of one all made. She didn't make it up. FYI) She tells us that she wants to be an artist when she grows up. But, when we were pointing out to her that some artists draw pictures for books, she told us that's not the kind of artist she wants to be. Maybe if she writes her own stories...
One of Olivia's favorite things to do is copy Elizabeth, so after school, Olivia made a doggie "iron bead" project. Olivia's is a rainbow one.
Vincent's number one thing that he likes to do is definitely, without equivocation, EAT! He's like a little puppy. Constantly mooching and begging for food. Yes, we feed him. He drinks a half a gallon of milk a day (or close to that)! He's really only ever sad when he's poopy or hungry.

ABC's of Me

A - Age: 26
B - Bed size: Queen
C - Chore you hate: Cleaning Bathtub
D - Dog's name: Scooter-stuffed dogs
E - Essential start your day item: Shower
F - Favorite color: red
G - Gold or Silver: silver
H - Height: 5'4"-ish
I - Instruments you play: I pretended to play the flute and drums in middle school
J - Job title: mother, wife, daughter, etc.
K - Kid(s): 3
L - Living arrangements: house...3 bedrooms, 1 bathrooms
M - Mom's name: Mary
N - Nicknames: Sweetie, Mom
O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: nope
P - Pet Peeve: When people dye their head yucky orange and then call it red, but it looks all gross
Q - Quote from a movie: "You seem angry - click your pen!"-Music and Lyrics
R - Right or left handed: Right
S - Siblings: 4 brothers and 1 sisters+ 8 sisters in law and 5 brothers in law
T - Time you wake up: about 8:30 (on a good day-most days it's really 9am)
U- Underwear: I'm for them!
V - Vegetable you dislike: eggplant
W - Ways you run late: When I want to sleep too long 'cause I stay up way too late doing things like this.
X - X-rays you've had: teeth, ankle (I tore ligaments in it in a parasailing accident when I was 15)
Y - Yummy food you make: Everything I make is GREAT!
Z - Zoo favorite: Monkeys

My Least Likes

Least List

You know all the things your friends like, but you don't really know them until you know the things they don't.

1) Least favorite place: Cesarean room in hospital-although then I get a baby.....
2) Least favorite food: Seafood
3) Least favorite song: Acky Breaky Heart-I'd tell you who sings (sort of) it, but I'm pretty sure you all know that it's Miley Cyrus's daddy.
4) Least favorite movie: Austin Powers
5) Least favorite nickname: "Little Red Head Girl"-Nobody calls me that anymore anyway. Really, it just happened in fifth grade when a substitute teacher called me that to read. I guess that wasn't as bad as what she called the girl wearing a black sweatsuit.
6) Least favorite holiday: Kwanzaa-since I don't do it.
7) Least favorite day of the week: Tuesday? Most are good.
8) Least favorite kind of soda: Grape
9) Least favorite person: Obama
10) Least favorite color: Pea Green
11) Least favorite car: Smart Car
12) Least favorite article of clothing: Tube Tops
13) Least favorite flavor of ice cream: Coffee
14) Least favorite restaurant: Skippers or Red Lobster
15) Least favorite saying: OMG
16) Least favorite season: Fall
17) Least favorite bodily feature: My tummy
18) Least favorite flower: Marigolds
19) Least favorite hobby: I only do hobbies I like, what is this? I guess cleaning the bathroom.
20) Least favorite personal characteristic: I talk too much and interrupt.

Quick Trip

We took a quick trip on Friday to Goldendale, where Andy's parent's are building a house in the mountains. We drove our Jeep with a trailer hooked up to it that was full of the doors for their place.
We left after Andy got home from work and we ate dinner, which ended up being about 6:30. We didn't get up there until about 8:40 because of two stops to fix the padded protection/straps in the trailer for those doors and one stop for gas and pop.
Andy's mom and dad had a fire going for marshmallow roasting (I brought all the stuff needed for s'mores! YUM!) We didn't stay there long because we had to do something else this morning at 9am. We ended up getting home with our kids asleep about 11:45. Late night. At least they can sleep in the car.
Elizabeth was all worried on the way up that Andy would get tired. She said that "Mommy should drive because she stays up later than you." Then she started asking about wolves and if they could break windows and if they would eat us....There are no wolves there we kept explaining, over and over. When we got there, she told Grandma Shirley that she "talked to us the whole way up so that Daddy wouldn't get tired."
Olivia slept the whole way there, so she was all wide eyes on the way back home. She talked the whole way back.
Vincent slept both ways because he had a short nap on Friday.
At least they weren't crying.
And I got to have a chocolate graham cracker, Hershey's chocolate, and two chocolate swirl marshmallow! Yu-um! The girls had their s'mores with strawberry marshmallows. They were on sale at WinCo. They've been asking for the chocolate graham crackers all day Saturday now though.
Here's some progressive pictures of how "the property", "Timber Crest" looks up to last week.



It's even closer to being done now! I can't believe how quickly it comes together with mostly just Friday night and all day Saturday work. Amazing. I guess when you get a good crew of guys up there.....(no, Andy says he can only count as half a guy.=)

Added New Music for Earth Day

I chose some songs about the earth today. Enjoy the cool songs.
A little rant to follow.
I hate when people try to shove things onto me. Every show today has their own little "green" segment. It used to just be once in a while, but now it's on every show all the time. I'm sick of it.

I do reuse things.
I do make a lot of my own things.
I make dinner, from scratch a lot of nights.
I do walk places, sometimes.
I do turn off lights when we don't need them.
I go on 2good2toss.com to sell things I don't need sometimes.
I will go to participate in our church cleanup a walkway project, even though they are calling it an Earth Day project.
I do donate things to Goodwill.

I also LOVE disposable diapers!
I LOVE taking hot showers, with water pressure.
I LOVE being able to flush the toilet, just once.
I LOVE air conditioning the temperature we like it.
I LOVE driving when I don't feel like walking.
I LOVE those plastic shopping bags (and I reuse them for our small trashes!)
I LOVE all kinds of convenient things that, all the sudden, are BAD. I don't think so.

Let us keep the stuff that works. If you make something better, I'll buy it. It just can't cost more! And it has to really work better. Not just make me "feel" better about buying it.

Absent

I've been a little absent from here getting my facebook going. I know, all of you (almost) already have one and I'm the late-comer. It is fun to reconnect with a bunch of former friends that I haven't seen since high school (some who I haven't even talk to since I moved from Umatilla, OR in fifth grade!). Most of my classmates are now married and most of them on there have at least one kid too. I'm talking now to people I used to hang out with at church dances and flirt with (the dumb punching them in the tummy and asking them to dance and stuff, not major flirting, I don't think. Now I know how silly I was. =)

I was busy finishing all my crafts for our Spring Event at my mother-in-law's house and trying to keep up with all our laundry and cleaning and cooking. Check out my recipe blog. I tried out the whole wheat and white bean (yes, white beans, instead of butter!) chocolate chip cookies today. They taste pretty good! The whole wheat does make them a little gritty, but not bad.

I finished my book group book (Mother Teresa A Simple Path) and my reading for our ward finance class tonight (Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Revisited).

I need to finish several cross-stitches for new babies and weddings coming up.
There are so many, my war chest won't last long.

Time to finish dinner up and probably eat another cookie.

Ransom-Made design Spring Event

My crafts, along with crafts and gifts (great for all summer birthdays and other holidays) by my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law plus an aunt and good family friend, are going to be on display at our Ransom-Made design Spring Event this Saturday, April 18th from 11-4pm at my in-laws' house in Kennewick.
We have some things on the website, but most of our new things aren't there yet, so if you want to be the first to buy them, come and visit us Saturday.
Our crafts our inexpensive and well-made.
The new pictures will be up on the site next week sometime.I have even more fabric choices now. I made these ones to give away for the first 5 giveaway. These brighten up your computer station! As though you need an excuse to spend more time there, right?
Who can't use new super-strong magnets to hold up all those reminders or cute kid drawings and also remind you to think?
These I Spy Bags are made with plastic vinyl on the outside, so they are easy to wipe germs off. They easily fit into a purse (even great for entertaining someone else's busy kid), and don't weigh it down.

I'm making:
Microwave Potato Bags
I Spy Bags for kids
Fabric-Covered Mousepads
Glass Magnets
Magnetic Dry Erase Frames with Magnetic paper-covered Erasers

And maybe something else. Come see.
If you need directions, email me at nadscrow@yahoo.com

Easter Morning

I guess I didn't unload the camera from Sunday morning yet. Here are the few pictures I took Easter morning.We had a great Easter. We went to church in Pasco for a nephew's baby blessing, which was wonderful and the kids did great in the bench with Grandpa, Grandma, and Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma. Andy stayed in Richland to practice with our choir before church. We just stayed for the first part of their ward and then drove home quickly to restock Vincent's cup and snacks and went to our ward for our meetings. After church, we came home and rested before dinner and a little Easter egg hunt in the basement at Grandpa and Grandma's (it was raining).
Vincent was more interested in the candy Olivia was trying to open here.

Olivia loves this "new" dress for Easter. It was Elizabeth's a few years ago given to her from a neighbor who grew out of it. Nice.Elizabeth keeps telling me that she wants to be an artist. Here's the perfect book for her.
The Easter bunny didn't bring too much candy this year, which is probably for the best. Elizabeth only noticed that we didn't have the giant marshmallow peeps.
(How come blogger wants to spell marshmellow with an "a"? Is that the "real" spelling. I'm so confused.) (We did get some delicious homemade marshmallows from my mom though.)

Clot Trot

The son of Andy's boss has hemophilia, which is a blood disorder, so we walked in the clot trot for a mile with our kids. We even got shirts and snacks.Starting out on the clot trot! Elizabeth was in a hurry. She didn't want to lose. She was really worried about that, even though we told her there wasn't winners and losers.
See her face? She was in pain to stop and look at the camera for half a second. After this, she ran a little to catch up, which, I think, was right about where Olivia started running and fell down on both her knees. No blood, but quite a few tears. They ran out of shirts, so Elizabeth got a giant one and I got one too.
The crew. Well, except for me, of course.
The girls and Andy rode in his boss's cool old firetruck afterward too. See those clouds? The rain started as soon as we got into our house.

Bonus story about the firetruck:
The summer I was just building Elizabeth (ie: she was -7 months) Andy and I drove the firetruck in the Fourth of July parades in Pasco and Kennewick. We were "lucky" enough for the Pasco one to be directly in front of the cheerleading kids singing, "Oh, Mickey, you're so fine..." over and over and over. It was GREAT! Anytime it bugged me, I ran the siren. That fixed the headache....

A Hunting We Will Go

We had our annual Easter egg hunt for the kids at church this morning.
They all had a great time. Our friend, Nathan, came to join us and helped with the kids too. It's always nice to have an extra set of hands to help.
Vincent knew there were treats inside too because he "helped" me fill them last night.
I could hardly even get a picture with him looking because he was so interested in the eggs!
Andy walked around with Vincent trying to help him get some yummy eggs.
Vincent studying his egg and trying to figure out if he can eat the things in it.
Olivia's eggs. Plus, a silly face.Elizabeth showing me her eggs.
Andy likes the pink jelly beans. He says they taste like Pepto Bismol. Olivia found one for him. Elizabeth looks pretty excited in the background too.
Here the kids are examining their treats. Vincent is just taking a break from looking to eat a jelly bean.

After we got home and now that the candy is mostly gone, Vincent is sleeping, and the girls and I colored Easter eggs.
Dying the eggs. I had some things leftover from last year. It works really well to put the cups in a muffin tins and then if some leaks over, it goes in the muffin tin. It's harder for the cups to tip too. We only had one egg holder thing, so it wasn't total chaos. =)
Elizabeth is trying her egg out in green. It may have had a color added to it after the initial dip.
Oh, aprons are great for kids! I wore mine too.
Here's our final pie plate of eggs drying. Guess which one is mine. Yeah, not too hard to guess. I don't know why my picture quality is so bad sometimes, but there they are.

Picture Taking Adventure

I really "love" going to the picture studio to arrange (in professional magazines, they call it wrangling for a reason) my kids into the poses that the photographers feel they have to change before they even get a good picture.
Maybe some of that trouble was that Vincent was crawling out of each picture to get something shiny on the floor or that he was mad most of the time.
Maybe some of the annoyance of picture-taking was that the girls kept looking at Vincent or the floor or just making silly faces.
But, really, when they show you the pictures and there is at least one that looks decent, all of that other stuff is priceless. From the picture, you can't tell that Vincent was upset or that Elizabeth and Olivia made wacky faces in most of the pictures.
But, the upside is that I was able to finish up my saver card at Picture People (they even let me use three things since it expired this week) and a coupon online for a free sheet and 20 percent off, so for 4 sheets (1-8x10, 2-5x7, 16-wallets), I paid: $4.77 and I had enough of all the pictures for the kids' grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, and enough for each of their little wallet picture books (I save one wallet of each professional picture for each kid so they have a collection of how they change and since it's just in wallet size, it's not a big deal).
Here's some of the outtakes, with the one we actually picked at the very end (just to keep you reading).
Yummy hands, Vincent! See how Elizabeth is holding him? She's trying to keep him there for the picture. Olivia looks really good in this one.
I liked this one, but Vincent isn't smiling enough. (or at all!)

I liked this one. It shows the chubby hands. Elizabeth's eyes crack me up and Vincent is in shadows.
This one is vertical (the picture will hang horizontal on my wall-which I told her when we started) and Vincent is doing a funny hand thing.
This one is good. I like the difference in their heights, but again, vertical instead of horizontal.
And finally, this one. They are all looking toward the camera and smiling (mostly). There weren't too many shadows. I think they lightened it up a little for my copies, so Olivia wasn't so shadowy. I just wish I could see a little more of their outfits, but this one was a keeper for me.

Oh, and mom, if you want your pictures, you're going to have to come and see me.

200!

This is my 200th post. WOW!
I have been blogging for almost a year now. I started the 13th of April last year. (At least with posts, I really started in November the year before that with pictures and didn't know what posting meant!)
I have been blog-crazy since then posting several times a week.
A year ago, I checked the five blogs of people I knew and I only checked once a week or so.
Now, I check tons of blogs (and LOVE it) and enjoy reading what my friends are doing in their day-to-day lives.
I love getting comments on my blog and hearing other peoples' stories or suggestions. Thanks everybody!

Also, if you are around here and want to get some of your summer gift-buying out of the way, stop by my mother-in-law's house on Saturday, April 18th from 11-4pm. We will be having our Spring Event for Ransom-Made design. If you need directions or more information, email me at nadellransom@gmail.com.

Aunt-Sisters

As we were listening to Conference on the computer, the girls were coloring on a table next to the computer. I didn't think they were really listening, but figured that it's best that they were at least in the same room as me...Olivia didn't last too long in the computer room, but went out to the family room, where Andy had it playing on the sound system through his computer...At the end of the morning session, there was a talk that was partly about ancestors and the trials they went through and how they did it. When it was almost over, I was tearing up and heard Elizabeth sniffling and all sad. She was trying to figure out why all four of the lady's babies died (and her husband too, she reminded us). At dinner (hours later), she told the story to Andy's family and even knew the ages and order that the children died. She was wondering if any of her "aunt-sisters" were pioneers. (She actually asked Andy right after the talk if there were any Ransom pioneers and then asked if there were any "aunt-brother" pioneers too. We told her to ask Grandpa George.)

She is so interested in this now, but I don't want to only tell her stories of how pioneers died. I'd like the experience to be nicer than that. Do you have any good stories about pioneers? Do you know about your "aunt-sisters"? Find out! Know why they did what they did for you. They had such strong faith and hope and love.

The "Special Spot"

Kids can come up with some weird things. Our couch has a "special spot" that the girls fight over. They like to sit on either side of Andy when he reads to them at night time. His left side is the favorite. Andy came up with a solution. He decided that on odd days, Elizabeth sits in the special spot and on even days, Olivia gets it. They are no longer arguing and crying about it. They still want that special spot though and ask what the date is now so they know whose day it is!
One problem SOLVED! Yea! Now, on to the next crazy idea they have about what is special.

Prize!

I opened up my mailbox today and look what I found!
This is from the First 5 blogs a while ago. I have almost delivered all of mine now too.
It's so cute!
I LOVE it!
Thanks so much Laurie. You are super talented!
I love aprons. They are so much fun. I think I'll wear it all afternoon! I love getting things in the mail that are fun and really for me and not just bills or pre-approvals for "Andre" or junk. YEA!

The girls have been walking/running all over today. We took some cookies to neighbors and then ran a video over to a friend a block and a half away. From that house, we drove to another person in our ward to take cookies (he mentioned to someone that he missed shaking hands with the girl with orange hair. He also told them that he looks forward to two things on Sunday, "opening his eyes, and shaking hands with Elizabeth". So sweet. So, we took him and his wife some cookies.) I made pumpkin chocolate chip ones. They sounded good today and they don't use eggs, which I was out of, so I made them and I'm sharing them 'cause they are so good, I want to eat them all!
Then, after we got back to our road, the girls wanted to run the 1/2 block the rest of the way home. Elizabeth went to the backyard and Olivia followed, but then when Elizabeth came around the front of the house to the side door to get a drink, Olivia freaked out and thought she was all alone and started running to the corner where I dropped her off to run. She couldn't see the car in the driveway and was really freaked out. She calmed down. Elizabeth asked if she could call a friend a block away to play with and so the girls just walked over there. (There is a walkway between houses 1 house over and I can see my friends' house from my backyard. She watched the walkway where I couldn't see them. They are practicing.)
Fun stuff.

Haircuts

Today, the kids and I went down to Hermiston (about 45 minutes away) to see my cousin, Danette, who cuts our hair. It's good to visit and catch up with her.
We either get super cheesy, not their real smiles, or looking straight toward something else making a silly face. Elizabeth told my cousin to make her hair straight and Olivia's curly to be opposites. She did it like that the last time too. Vincent did not require a haircut at this time, because of his haircut a few weeks ago.

Before we got our haircuts, we stopped and had lunch (THANKS!) with my cousin's wife, Kari. She was so sweet. The girls played dress up with her little girl and so, of course, they had a fabulous time. Their little boy who is ten days older than Vincent was sleeping already. It was really nice to see them. We have been able to get to know each other better through these awesome things that are blogs, but haven't been able to hang out much. She is GREAT! And I totally forgot to take pictures of the girls dancing around in the dress up after their faces were clean, so sorry, no before pictures of the girls' hair.
We aren't really doing any super big things for Spring Break, especially since it's been raining all week. We are actually ending up waking up earlier to babysit friends and do playdates. That's really all Elizabeth and Olivia want to do anyway is play. They love playing. Everytime we leave or their friends leave, she immediately asks when she can play again. Silly girl. It's like she thinks everyone can just be called and be able to play as soon as she wants to play.