Caitlin's Birthday (Part I)

Last night was the first part of Caitlin's birthday celebration...

We got a suite at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak and spent all day today at the water park there! We all had a blast...got a little sunburned despite the buckets of sunblock I tortured the kids with (actually Caitie is the ONLY one who didn't get burned)!

It's 745 and everyone is in bed. Here are some pictures of last night and this afternoon

A view of the "casitas" we stayed in. They are great little two story "houses" with kitchens and two bathrooms! Very cool :)

Main pool(above)

Playing a little miniature golf before the "dive in movie" started - you can see the lazy river to the right - it was HUGE, we spent a lot of the afternoon there! After golf, we went back over to the main pool where they had a projection screen set up for Madagascar II. It was such a perfect night! We stayed out there until 9pm...late for the kids, especially when they had such a busy day Friday!



Dinner Friday night. We ordered pizza from Spinato's, a local place that has gluten free crust on the menu! Yay for Evan

Kitchen of the casita...

Tomorrow we are having a little birthday party with just us, Tracy and maybe her friend Tom and Julie (our babysitter) and her husband Denny.

Round II comin' up!

Busy, busy day!

Friday was a busy day! The kids both woke up at 5AM!! We had gymnastics in the morning where they ran themselves ragged. We got back home just in time to meet Julie and she took them to Chick-Fil-A for lunch, where they played again for quite a while.

When they got home it was just about time to leave for the water park!

Poor kids...it may be a long weekend.

Rental Woes No More...

For those of you who didn't know, we've been dealing with rental craziness at our house in KC. In February we found out our roof was leaking and we had hail damage (which isn't really a bad thing - we got a new roof!). But then, in March we found out there was mold in the basement and of course a leak to go along with it. So, it took a little over two months but we finally got all of that under control (a new rook, the leak repaired, mold removed and basement refinished) and listed the house for rent again.

Last weekend we found renters!! Yay! It's so nice to not have to make that mortgage payment this month.

Now we can start thinking about what we want to do here in Phoenix...rent again next year or buy a house??

Happy 12th Anniversary

Woo hoo! We made it!

12 years, 2 dogs, 2 kids, one cross-country move :) = Lots of LOVE!

In February we exchanged rings a second time out by Canyon Lake. My ring was lost last year on Caitlin's 1st birthday and Danny hadn't been wearing his.

We had been looking for new rings for a while but didn't want to spend a whole bunch of money on them. We just wanted something simple and silver. We came across rings at Tortilla Flats of all places! They are steel and just simple silver bands...perfect!

My Mom and Dad were in town and we drove out to Canyon Lake and stopped along the road to find a geocache...it was a beautiful view so we climbed up to the top and exchanged the rings! It was very impromptu and really cool! There is a picture of us up there however, I can't find it at the moment.

To celebrate this year we are going together to get Margarita pedicures at a spa near our house! Seriously, you get a foot massage, sit in massage chairs and they serve you Margaritas! What a great night...we'll get pictures of that, too!

Facebook, Twitter, a Blackberry and Text Messaging

I think Danny and I are actually moving backward in time.

I got a Blackberry in January, something I had always felt was not for me (I'm not that techie)...of course since our plan was the unlimited data plan I started texting Danny and Chrissy and everyone else although I still refuse to use the text shorthand/lingo so I'm slow as molasses when I text!

Now for BeCentsAble we are trying to use Twitter and Danny came home from work the other day and told me he had signed-up on Facebook...guess where he's been the past three nights?? And guess who else is on Facebook? Like, the whole world!

I always thought there was a generation gap keeping me from the social networks, chat rooms and instant messaging...maybe I'm really just "uncool"??

Caitlin's 2nd Birthday

Our little Caitie will be TWO this weekend! It's hard to believe :(

She's so funny and outspoken. She talks really well now and has a great imagination. She loves to dance and climb and act goofy. When she walks around you can see she's just in her own little world. So opposite Evan. He's VERY aware of what's going on around him and listens to everyone's conversations...Caitlin doesn't seem to realize we're in the room most of the time and sometimes she downright ignores us!

We've been planning her party and wanted to share what we're doing. Caitlin loves Tinkerbell so as I mentioned earlier we are having a Tinkerbell party. I am making a Tinkerbell cake and we have Tinkerbell decorations and she's even getting Tinkerbell the movie!

On Friday we are going to stay at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak...they have a huge waterpark with "dive-in" movies - a specialty around here. We'll get to watch a kids movie in the pool. We're staying in a "casita", it's like a little cabin/hotel room with a sun deck and two rooms so the kids can sleep while Danny and I hang out!

She's getting lots of fun toys for her birthday...a talking Tea Party set and a dollhouse. She loves to sit with the Little People toys and feed them all lunch and dinner and her stuffed animals all get drinks of water and she feeds them the play food from their kitchen do I think (hope) the tea set will be a hit!

We'll be sure to take lots of pictures from this weekend and put the slideshow of updated photos back up!

They're Just Humoring Me!

Thank goodness Danny's a good sport and the kids are still young...it gives me the freedom to experiment!

We are developing our CentsAbly Green workshop for BeCentsAble and doing a lot of hands on research.

We started by trying out several products from Shaklee and found their Basic H and Scour Off to be excellent and low cost in addition to being all natural. It only costs $.03 to make a bottle of cleaner from the concentrate Basic H vs $.30 per bottle we were paying for vinegar and water solution! Plus, it works VERY WELL and smells good :)

Next we made our own laundry detergent! I know - it sounds crazy but read on!

We both read The Simple Dollar (the author, Trent, is from the midwest and recently published a book - he's very resourceful!) and last week he posted a tutorial on making your own liquid laundry detergent for $.01-$.02 per use! That's compared to the lowest price we could find of $.17 per use with a low end detergent.

We make a 5-gallon bucket in about 10 mins and have tested it on a variety of stains (blood, chocolate, mud, grass stain, berry stain - seriously, these kids are messy!) and it works just as well as the other stuff at a phenomenal price and it's healthier for you and the environment. Guess What? it can be used on HE machines too. HE washing detergents are made to work with less water and formulated to suds less. The homemade detergent doesn't suds at all so it's no problem.

Now, we diverge from family experiments to my own personal experiments. Danny has't done this one yet.

I have been using baking soda and apple cider vinegar to wash and condition my hair. Way too out there for you? I understand. But, if you're game, try it out one day when you don't have anything planned - I LOVE IT! It's been 5 days now and my hair is fine, it doesn't smell like vinegar, it's not greasy or dry or frizzy or ... it's just fine, for pennies and I don't have to worry about build-up.

Here's the process:

1 TBSP of Baking Soda to 1 C warm water, pour over your hair making sure it gets down to the scalp, rinse well
1 TBSP of ACV to 1 C wamr water, pour over your hair, comb with fingers and let sit for 30-60 seconds, rinse.

The last major change we've made is to our choice of DW detergent. We have a truy horrible dishwasher and the water stains, detergent residue were really bad! We bought an eco-friendly dtergent from CostCo (their Kirlkand brand) for HALF the price of the same size box of Cascade and were blown away by how well it works! It's been about a month now and the dishes are actually cleaner, with no residue and no water spots! It's really kind of unbelievable. It was $5.67 for a 128 oz box vs nearly $10 for the Cascade.

And now the BIG LEAP, for the girls...guys, you've been warned - just stop reading right here

I've personally been using these for a couple of months and have ordered this and...NOTE: I was a HUGE skeptic but we got them for free to try out for the workshop so I did...I'm a complete convert. There were 5 others from the BeCentsAble team who tried them and we ALL (yes 100% agreement) love them and have sworn off the traditional method.