Seriously?

Ok, so I shared a couple of posts ago that the book, Folks, This Ain't Normal, was changing my life - and it still is - more on that later. 

In the meantime, I have found another perk (pun intended, really always intended) that is changing my life also.  In an effort to tighten up the ole Hummel budget I went in search of recipes for Starbucks Vanilla Lattes and I think I have perfected the taste. 

See Ya Later $4 coffee, hello coffee in my favorite mug, at my house ANY time I want.  No lugging the boys into a storefront or going out of my way to a drive through across town.

So here it goes:  Brew some strong coffee (in my opinion any coffee will do, but we use an organic regular black coffee from Natural Grocers).  Put 1/4 cup of milk in a pan and heat it up, transfer to the blender and blend away until it creates foam (a couple minutes).  I have also used cold milk and it worked fine.  Add two teaspoons of vanilla extract and some stevia to the coffee and then pour in the milk and spoon on the foam. 

Wool Ah- Skinny Vanilla Latte T-bucks style.  It's REALLY IS delicious.

Let's Hear it for Saving Money.

Mini Me...

I get comments ALL THE TIME about my sons being mini Mike's, but I would like to set the record straight on my eldest Mister.  He is the spitting image of his father, but his personality is truly a MINI ME - smart, FUNNY, super goodlooking, HUMBLE, etc...you name it -

WE GOT IT (does that even make sense?).  I just like that we resemble each other in this picture (because we are doing the same thing).  These really are my kids!

Let's Hear it for being Silly.

Babies up early...

Both of the boys were up early this morning.  Come on guys, especially you - TRACK.  You have slept through the night a total of 5 or 6 times in your whole 5 months, so to get up early also is UNACCEPTABLE!

I was laying in bed at 7:30a or so and heard some crying - some LOUDER than normal crying.  I stumble out of my room and into T's room and he is laying there perfectly still - but the crying is still happening.  I am literally thinking to myself, as I stand over him, how is he doing that?  Then it hits me - it's not T it's G, der.  Stumble across the hall, open G's door, and say "baby, what's wrong", to which he responds "huh?" (approximately 10 times).  Then he asks me if sweeps (sheep) are scary or if they are not scary like pana bears (panda bears) - WEIRD.  I explain that sheep and panda bears are not scary (i realize panda bears are likely scary, but I needed him to go back to sleep, so...), hold him in the chair, rock him to sleep (which was really sweet) and put him back to bed.

Enter more crying:  T's room

Settle him in the swing so I can do some reading.

Ok, make tea - start reading...8:00a rolls around and T is not settled.  Feed T - now what?   Most days these kids aren't up until 9ish.  I know, I know...your kids get up really early - well mine go to bed later than your average cubby bear.

So, we read together...

looked at each other...

chewed on some stuff...

lazed around...

took a bath...

and then went back to bed.  That was a lot to do in an hour or so, but we had a fun time.  Buddy, maybe you should get up earlier more often (KIDDING).  Next time - SPANKING.

Then 9:30a rolls around and this guy gets up to his usual "Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity" breakfast.

Haven't had a hot breakfast in a while, come to the Hummel household...it's an EVERY morning occurrence.  Man this is one lucky toddler!

So that's our morning situation - interesting huh?  Good Blogging.

Let's Hear it for Late Sleepers

Close call...

Wondering where my blog has been the past few days?

The story goes like this...

Approx: 6 months ago

T:  My phone won't send emails

M:  It's your hotmail account, you need a gmail account

T:  Ok, just don't worry about it

Repeat convo EVERY week.

Approx:  1 week ago

M:  Send Rachel an email of G singing from your phone

T:  My phone doesn't send email - it's broken

M: (visibly peeved) I'm going to fix it

T:  Nah, I don't care (although I complain about it)

M:  (takes phone and fixes email)

T:  How did you fix it?

M:  Created you a gmail account and now it works.

T:  Great

M:  Your new email address is THummelMOM@gmail.com

T:  (Mortified) My new email is WHAT?  You gave me an email with the word "mom" in it.  That is really stupid silly and I am way too embarrassed to use it.  (I am a mom, but I am not 45 with a mom doo and high waisted jeans.  Also, who wants to tell someone that my email address is (spelled out) t h u m m e l M O M, you know like mom - I'm a mom you know, NO THANK YOU).  Make it go away....please make it go away, before anyone sees it. 

M:  (annoyed) takes it off my phone

T:  (Relived - cool status preserved)

Approx: 2 days ago

M:  Did you order that google deal for the museum for G?

T:  Will do daddy-o (for your entertainment only) right now.  (ordered it and to my horror the receipt was sent to THummelMOM@gmail .com - i lose it a little bit here).  Honey, I don't want this email, please get rid of it, why did you pick suck a terrible email?, etc.  I don't want it tied to my stuff or my friends to start using - I wish you had never made it...please delete it.

M: (super annoyed - sits down and deletes it)

T:  Thank you

1 Day Ago:

Kels:  Did you take your blog down?

T:  Huh?  (opening blog page)

Puter:  Your blog was accidentally deleted by your husband deleting your ridiculous email address that he created (ok - it said something more technical, but this is what it meant)

T:  Panic sets in - CRAP CRAP CRAP (said out loud, but not in front of the children)

Kels:  I think we can get it back... (not sounding sure)

(call Mike - no answer - repeat 5 times - out of town as usual)

Ok. So, I am beside myself at this point in the story.  I actually have to keep telling myself "its ok, at least we are all alive".  Really?  I am likening deleting my blog to dying - priority check needed.  I get to work, still cant get a hold of Mike, which is not super surprising.  I feel sick about it - 175 posts - chronicling the boys life - GONE.

Kelsey and I are both super busy at work, so we didn't have a chance to work on it right away, but we both appealed Google to get the THummelMOM email back up and going (ugh - still hate the email address - really, Mike? THummelMOM...oh well at this point I NEED that email).

No answer from google.  I put the boys down for their nap and start doing more research.  It appears this is a common problem and NO ONE EVER gets their stuff back.  Kelsy steps in with some comforting words at this point..."well, tara, you aren't everyone".  I'm thinking - "OK KELS - whatever".  Then we are on the phone talking about it and trying to log into my other blog (baby book for G) and it says my password was changed 5 hours ago.  A light goes off and we realize, someone must be working on the problem - YES.  I reset the password and wool a - both blogs registered to THummelMOM are restored.  Praise Jesus!

This guy felt SO bad, I think?

Moral of the story - NEVER delete ANYTHING.  Things are so intuitive now that they link themselves, so we had no way of knowing that creating a gmail account would link to my blogger, which is a google platform.  What a nightmare.

Let's Hear it for THummelMOM.

Why do I clean?

Dear Landry-

Did you really think I vacuumed this rug for you to lay on?

If I wouldn't have been feeding the baby I would have kicked you right to the curb.

PS.  I DID NOT CLEAN IT FOR YOU!  And for the record I should have named you Roofus or Poopster or something so I could have named one of my kids Landry.  Why did I think using my favorite name for our first dog was a good idea?

Love-

Mama

Lets Hear it for the Poopster

Feeding the Ducks...

Graham has been dying to feed the ducks, so I have been saving up our bread butts and waiting for a warm day.  The day came, we packed up the double bob, our stale bread (and some extra pita chips just in case we ran low on bread) and off we went!

This is Graham asking why this duck WON'T eat his bread.

 

This is G pointing at all of the ducks headed AWAY from us.

Dear Sucks-

First of all, YES I meant SUCKS.

Are you really so full that you cant take a piece of bread from my toddler?  Did you really need to spoil his adventure to the park, but running (swimming, whatever) the other direction.  For your knowledge, our bread is organic and so were the pita chips.  In fact, the pita chips weren't even stale. 

So this is your warning...next time we come (small toe headed kids, smiling from ear to ear about feeding you sorry guys) eat what we offer and say thank you.

Sincerely,

Peeved Mama

Here's what T was doing?  Just happy to be alive.

Let's Hear it for Hungry Ducks

 (hint hint to all the ducks reading this)

I wish...

I wish I could buy these at Whole Foods.

I would buy 5 10 more (of mommies puppy that is).

Let's Hear it for Mommies Puppy.

Sweepy Sweepy, kinda Sweepy...

Graham has started pretending to be asleep, which he and I both think is hilarious.

Sweeping on the changing table - WAKE UP! 

Sweeping in the chair - WAKE UP!

G Sweeping in the laundry basket - WAKE UP! 

Sweeping on the Ottoman (very convincing) - WAKE UP!

Sweeping next to Track - T thought the WAKE UP part was AMAZING.

Sweeping in the bay window waiting for dada to come home - this WAKE UP was too fast for film.

Let's Hear it for being Sweepy.

Crafting with Kels, Part II...

Mike was out of town AGAIN, so Kelsey came to keep up company.  We decided to be super prductive and make and bake stuff.

Making:  BIRD FEEDERS!!!

Here is G showing us his bone shaped cookie cutter.  Why do we have a bone shaped cookie cutter?

Filling it up with bird seed plus gelatin.

He was being VERY careful/ meticulous.  I have no idea what remnants are left on his face...no telling, my best guess would be pizza, whoagurt, or bird seed.

Checking to see if there was any left to make one more.

Posed smile - ALWAYS silly.

Wool-ah...bird feeders in the shape of Christmas stuff and a bone.  Note to self:  Buy more cookie cutters.  Time to try out our baking skillz as the bird seed dries. 

Where are the now?:  We forgot to flip the cookie cutters every few hours, so they never dried and then fell apart.  We finally threw them away when they started to smell like stinky feet.  Good news is I have a WHOLE bag of wild bird seed, so we WILL try again - Yippee (said sarcastically).  Maybe we will just buy a bird house thingy.

Baking:  NUFFINS!!!

Scratch "Nuffins" with a crusty (weird word) top.

Whoa - they exploded!

They were really good...."Cheers" to blueberry nuffins.  Baking from scratch  isn't THAT hard...next week, Beef Bergonyawn (do you bake that?, did I spell that right - probably -definitely)

FINALLY - night night time.

Let's Hear it for Nuffins.

Today...

The weather was AMAZING today. 

We broke out the sidewalk chalk.

We played with colored bubbles - terrible idea (steer clear - REALLY messy)

We left the door open.

  

We wore shorts.

We played with dada.

We jumped on the couch.

and we ended up REALLY dirty.

Let's Hear it for 75 Degrees in January.

Kelsey is in the Bible, who knew?

Graham and I were giving our normal "cheers" to mama, "cheers" to dada, "cheers" to track, "cheers" to Jesus, etc one morning, when we stumbled upon Kelsey in the Bible.  I was in the kitchen when G made this discovery and I kept saying, no baby Kelsey is not in the bible - she was at our house last night, but he is definitely not in your bible. 

Then I walked over to see what story he was reading..."The girl no one wanted", well that story could be about Kels....J/K, J/K.

Then, right there on the next page...I see her and exclaim to G...Kelsey IS in the bible.  I mean that is like the spitting image of Kels - AMAZING.

This is actually Rachel above, which was super confusing because G&T's current nanny is Rachel.  Anywho, at least Rachel was not the sister no one wanted, she was the pretty one.  Poor Leah.

 

Let's Hear it for Kelsey, born of Kark of the Bible.

Instagram...

As usual, I am a late to the "cool app" revolution.  I just started using Instagram for myself on my iPhone.  I have seen people do this for at least a year.  Look at how cute the pics are

Let's Hear it for InstaGRAHAM and InstaTRACK.