Wonderful Visitors

When I was a preschool teachers I was blessed to make some great friends. I think what made us such great friends is we were all pregnant at the same time. Now we  all live in different places and hadn't seen each other in quite some time, so we decided that needed to change.

So a few weeks ago these 2 special ladies came down and brought their beautiful children with them.  That day my little house was busting at the seams with 3 moms, 4 two year olds and 1 9 month old.  It was wonderful!  The kids had so much fun, but also the moms had so much fun.  This is definitely something we need to do more often.  For the next couple days Penny would randomly say "Where baby Alli go?"  "Gavyn and Scarlett come back?" She had so much fun having her friends over to play.  Keeping in touch with old friends is important and I hope our kids will become old friends too.

Our Future Fireman

This post is a little late, but still cute none the less. On 9-11 my mom's church takes meals to the local firefighters. This year she asked if I would like to take the kids when she delivered to food. I jumped at the chance!

I figured this would be a great way to show Ben and Penny appreciation for those who help us. While we were there the firefighters gladly showed them the trucks and all the stuff. Penny wasn't too sure about the truck or the firefighter but Ben loved it!  He sat right up in the truck with his flashlight and pretended to drive. This was also special for us because this was the firehouse where my grandpa was assistant chief when he was a volunteer fireman. My grandma brought a scrapbook to share with the fireman. She also brought my grandpa's old fire hat which is so much heavier than the new ones. 

This day was a huge success, not only did we feed and honor some of our community heroes, we also gave Ben something to talk about for weeks!

Little Wonders Wednesday is back!

I know I have been gone for a very long time, but I am finally getting used to this new life and missing some of my old bloggy friends.  I have all kinds of new ideas I am working on getting ready to blog about from our new journey in organic farming and our new house to my new working life and balancing it with the two cutest two year olds on the earth.

Speaking of the two cutest kids on earth, here are Penny and Ben hanging out in our new back yard.

We all have a lot to catch up on, so please link up and tell me all about your little wonders!

Homemade Laundry Detergent Flop

So I did it. Everyone posts these and talks about how great they are. They really are a lot cheaper and last forever. So I thought I would give it a try. 

The one I tried called for 2 grated bars of fels naphtha soap, a box of borax, a box of baking soda, a box of washing soda, some purex crystals for scent, and a box of oxiclean.  Easy right?

It was slightly time consuming to grate the soap but other than that I mixed it all up on a tub in minutes  

At first I really liked it. It worked pretty good and smelled good. Then I realized it didn't always get the stains out of my kids clothes. Then after awhile I realized it wasn't getting the deodorant out of my clothes and I was getting those nasty yellow armpit stains. So I started using more than the two table spoons it said to use. When I did that I noticed it was really tough on my clothes and was fading them a lot. 

So after  3 months of using it I have a bunch of faded stained clothes and  not happy about it. I thought of trying another recipe, but I'm not sure I want to with how long it takes to use it up. 

Have any of you used any recipes you liked that were good enough to get out stains but not fade your clothes?  If not it is back to Tide for me. 

Down on the Farm

Yesterday the organic farm Will works for had a farm day. Some of their customers and workers all got together and had a potluck and tour the farm. It was really great to get to see where Will works. It is amazing how much healthy food they are able to provide for people on a fairly small plot of land. They have pigs, chickens, and a big market garden. They have cows on some land somewhere else. It was great to see. 

And let me tell you Ben and Penny had a ball. Penny loved going in and out of the barn. And Ben... Let's just say Ben got a new favorite thing. They had a small chicken out in a pen for all the kids to see. Ben would not leave the chickens pen all afternoon and all we have heard about since is the chicken. We hope we can get some chickens soon. Ben would be so happy!