Laundry

I can count on one hand how many of my friends have the same amount of laundry to do as me. They are the ones with four or more kids. As you know I have five. Two preteen girls make double the amount of my three boys. Then my husband and my self.

I have a method I like to use when washing clohes. I have to say as long and no one interupts my routine by Sunday evening my multiple loads of laundry are washed and put away.

I like the dirty clothes to be put in our main bathroom. Eye sore I know but constant reminder as well. Even over flowing just throw it in there,get in my system and done. On the floor in a bedroom is just not going to get done and you are the kids asking me where is ________? When everyone else has theirs.

I like to start my laundry for the week on Wednesday. By Sunday my clothes are clean. The picture is a Thursdays amount of laundry. I know it seems impossible and never ending but it gets done.

My kids help. Here is our game plan.

I have two double load baskets. One I keep in the bathroom. The idea is to get it before it spills out. (As you can see this week I failed. ) The second one I keep empty in the garage. I always have a load in the washer. The basket is always ready for the dryers clothes to be brought in. The wet go in the dryer. I bring my basket into the livingroom and fold. The emptied basket is filled with a new load for the washer. Taken to the machine and left empty for the dryer.

All clothes get folded in stacks according to owner. Each owner is responsible for putting their own stack away. Joey for extra stars on his chart will help me put away his baby brothers clothes. Sonny is in charge of putting towels away.

All of that folding and washing leaves us with one last bit of laundry and my pet peeve. SOCKS!!!!!

Like you, on a much larger scale I fear is sorting socks. Seven peoples socks to sort every week are mostly white. I personally loath sorting and pairing socks so I created the crazy sock system. Not very complex and can use improvment. It's a single load laundry basket all the clean socks go in. This is also the one thing that can earn my kids stars on their chart. I'll give a star to every sock paired with it's mate. (My kids love stars. They are worth an item from Target when they reach 200. They more often than not select a video game. A well earned treat I think.) If the kids don't sort neither do I. I HATE miss matched socks.

My work to resolve the resolutions has begun.

I'm home. My back is a mess and I'm trying to keep my mind away from Facebook 24/7 and Who's baby is it anyway on daytime TV. (You pick the show)

The weather still isn't right for out door garden work but in side I can PLAN!!!!! Hooray for the Internet and a lovely man to bump ideas off of.


The list:

• corn
• bok choy
• strawberries
• sweet peas
• Japanese Eggplant
• pumpkins
• melon
• tomato
• squash
• Sunflowers( Hopefully to make a fort this year)

My backyard is an empty slate. When we rented the house 5 years ago it was nicely racked dirt. The rain bring lots of wild grass and my itch to grow. You may have seen my garden a few years ago. It was good but this year it will be AWESOME!!!! As I've done before I will keep you posted on our progress.

These are the first pictures of the awful truth we need to deal with before ugly is pretty. Currently it's fun. It has a ton of ladybugs and hours of fun catching them.

First part of the adventure this year is the compost.

About 3 months back I filled a huge 80 gallon bin with yard clippings. I am hoping to use this as a starting place for my compost. So far it is 12 inches shorter than it has been.

Craiglist.org will be my starting place for a composting drum that I can easily turn the decomposing clipping and eventually organic kitchen waste. Wish me luck!

Lutz boys sing Rock n Roll High School

New goals

1. This years garden will be fabulous.
2. I will have chickens.
3. Learn to compost.
4. Read more watch TV less.
5. Run more.
6. Reduce house hold clutter by 50%
7. Take family to the snow.
8. Visit 3 state/national parks with the kids.
9. Keep strong with eating and feeding my family healthy.
10. Get Sonny to sleep in his own bed.

Blended Family of 5: Tonight blog is about my husband, my new word and pictures with the webcam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaujolais_nouveau

Tonight blog is about my husband, my new word and pictures with the webcam.

My sweet heart loves me. He always buys me my favorite cheep wine. Yes the infamous Two Buck Chuck. Well today we joked about Charles Shaw's Nouveau Red table wine. The fun-est part of the wine is the idea we know nothing about wine. LOL. Apparently via wikipedia Nouveau wine is a lot cooler that we thought. As Warren joked that it is possibly a mix of all the wine Trader Joe's couldn't sell. It is a wine made with grapes grown in Germany that is sold the third Thursday of November. Seeing that the 3rd Thursday just past I'm excited to see if it is as exciting as I think it should be. As should you all who enjoy a truly cheep drink.

First the bottle is a fun shape. Festive I suppose. The wine is a deep purple......border line pink. It's tart and light. I can truly say it meets my well formed pallet for a treat a super cheap wine should be.

Get your walking shoes on and get to the nearest Trader Joe's. Treat your self to my new seasonal, tasty and fun beverage. All my besties know my over active brain is thinking of a cheap wine tasting party. Come on ladies share with me your favorite and we can have a tasting party.

Thanks Warren. Again I love it! And you infinity peanuts.

At the risk of sounding crazy I want to talk about Fear.

The top fears in my home rationalized or not they are real.

I fear birds. Big ones, little ones, caged ones, trained ones and wild ones scare me white! With the exception of chickens . A few short bird stories to make you giggle... but have given me nightmares.

Once upon a time I had an upstairs apartment. The top of a beautiful tree was near the walk to my front door. A tiny little nest was in this tree with a tiny little humming bird couple and the nest of tiny little eggs. Every time I left or came home I felt much like how Gilligan must have felt being attacked by all the tiny little people in his travels. I was dive bombed by flying needles. I woke my neighbors with blood curdling screams.

Story two....... Sonny was a small baby able to sit but not crawl. I had just picked the kids up from school and was entering my house I walked straight into the kitchen to see out of the corner of my eye a finch sitting on my printer. I fell to the ground and started screaming save me. My hero Joey walked to the sliding back door and opened it. Out went the tiny bird. The kids where laughing so hard I'm sure my parents heard them in Fresno, dad's hearing aid off.

Last bird story..........A beautiful summer day Warren took me to the Tea Garden's in San Fransisco. We were having a nice chat when I felt something staring at me. I turned my head to be looking eye to eye with a Pigeon. I jumped and screamed. Warren now knew my biggest fear and still married me. Since then he's seen me drop and duck more than once in fear of BIRDS!!!

Joey's fear is of weirdos. I'm not sure if that's him, his experiences or me? We adopted Joey about 4 years ago from Foster Care. I was/am a paranoid mother who is fearful that somewhere in our county his biological mother lives and is capable of kidnapping him. So I put Joey and the girls in a self defence class that focused on strangers and bullies that was age appropriate. I had a private conversation with the instructor about Joey and how we needed to include people we know can be strangers as well. The kids and I looked up people in our neighborhood that were registered offenders and talked about how even nice people can be bad. Then I went as far as talking about aunts and uncles and family friends could be strangers. Mostly because Joey is my brother's biological son, Joey often refers to him as Uncle Jonathan. . Seams pretty healthy to me, until Halloween came. We went to a few houses in our neighborhood. At first he was into it. Running from door to door asking for candy with the girls and saying thank you. Then it became running to a door asking for candy and then thanking the person and yelling to them to WATCH OUT FOR WEIRDOS. Then it turned in to not wanting to go up to houses at all and locking all his muscles and me having to carry a very stiff and frightened Joey a half a mile home. This happens every year now unless he goes with Warren. Joey's fear of strangers is so strong it's impresses me. He sticks to me like glue and can not go into areas he knows are safe unless they are well lit.

My second oldest feared germs. She would wake up in the middle of the night needed to wash her hands and crying out terrified about germs being on her. The park became no fun for a while until she forgot about the germs and hand sanitizer is necessary to keep close at hand. She is not so bad now that she is older but for a while I feared when she would worry what had germs on it in a panic.

Sonny is very close to total potty training success, except for the creatures that live in public restrooms. He is so convinced they exist he will cry uncontrollable until removed from the restroom not mattering if it is you or him going. We take short trips now in diapers, he hates them. Occasionally he will try to pee somewhere in public like on the side of the play structure. We definitely have our work cut out on stamping out this fear.

Marysa I fear, fears nothing. This can be good and bad. My fear is that she will try something dangerous like bolting out in to a parking lot as she did in kindergarten or taking off to ride a ride in an amusement park without notice as she did at both at Santa Cruz Boardwalk and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. (Marine World) or take a walk to a local park and not asking me. My favorite how she doesn't fear fire,often getting way to close for my comfort. I swear that this child will be the cause of ulcers in her mother one day.

Declan's fears have yet to come. I think he's just to young or maybe a Marysa junior. Time will tell.

Then there is my love. He fears flying. He does well to build up courage to fly but I always get the very real good-byes and we have never flown together as our children need a parent if something happens. He's been listening to some kind of self hypnosis that he says helps so maybe Hawaii is in our future together?