Back to the land of computers

It's so funny how much I rely on my computer nowadays. It used to be that the computer was something I played Solitaire on once in a while and now it has turned into something that I use on a daily basis for something or other. First of all, I work at home doing medical transcription, so I use it for work, I read the news online rather than watch it, I check the sale ads on Pinching Your Pennies rather than read the actual sale papers, and then of course there's Facebook, blogs, and e-mail to keep up on.

So, for the past week I have been unable to be on a computer at all because of a nasty virus. It hit my computer last Sunday while I was working (I guess that's a sign I shouldn't have been working on a Sunday right:) So, we thought we could use anti-virus software to get rid of it, but not so. Les decided our safest route was to completely reformat the computer. Yikes!!! We had to order an external hard drive to back up all the files we needed and then wait for it to arrive. It came Thursday and we finally got everything set back up yesterday. It's so hard to get everything back to the way you had it before, but so far I think it's pretty good.

So, you may ask, what did I do this week without my computer? Well, I caught up on laundry, cleaned up the house, took the kids to the library, read a book, made new watchbands for my interchangeable watch, played a lot of Scrabble on my cell phone, and tried to start potty training Brooklyn.

Apparently I spend way more time on the computer than I had originally thought because I sure accomplished a lot this week!! Maybe this week will teach me to balance my time better, who knows, but I sure am glad to be back online!!!

Update on the food coloring incident

A few of you have shown some interest in whether the food coloring has come out, so here's an update. As far as the best cleaning method, just plain water and a lot of towels has worked the best. The couch looks pretty good, but there are a couple spots that still need some work. The floor is slowly coming clean, but because there was so much of it, it's taking a lot of water and a lot of blotting. I will also need to clean the entire floor once I'm done because now I have cleaner spots than the rest of the carpet. As far as the kids, they still have spots, but it's getting lighter. And the dog...well he's still looking very patriotic :) So, if this ever happens to you, just grab a bunch of water and a bunch of towels and have fun!!!

Also, I cannot say enough about microfiber couches!!! I don't think I would have had as good of luck with some other kind of fabric. Microfiber is definitely the way to go with kids around!!!

The food coloring incident

I've been told by many people that if your kids do something that you're really upset about, then just grab your camera because you'll think it's funny later on. Well, I did just that and I really do hope that I find this funny later on!!! This is what happens when the food coloring that was used the night before doesn't get put back on the highest shelf in the cupboard.

I'm not sure if you can tell exactly how much food coloring they actually got into, but it was all over them, the couch, the carpet, and the dog. Food coloring in that amount is not the easiest thing to clean and unfortunately it is an ongoing process right now. It won't come off the kids, I haven't even tried the dog and the carpet still has a slight shade of pink. The couch doesn't look too bad, but there's still more coloring coming off of it each time I wipe it down. So, if anyone has any ideas about how to get food coloring out, let me know. As of now, I will be doing research on the internet until I find something that works.

Halloween, I know I'm a little late

We really did celebrate Halloween around here, I'm just really slow about actually posting about it. We went to several parties and got lots of candy and had a great time. Les and I were party poopers this year and didn't dress up, but here are the kids costumes:

Brooklyn was a witch.

Kenzie was Hannah Montana

Kaden was a cowboy.

Cody was a hobo.

Pictures were nearly the death of me!!!

As you can see, we finally did get pictures of everybody this time around, but not without more drama of course!! I got the kids all dressed up exactly how they were the week before and set out for Layton Park. I decided to start with a picture of all the kids together and then move on to individuals, but unfortunately the kids were not being very cooperative and that was taking forever. As soon as I decided that I had a good group picture and was ready to move on my camera battery died. I was so mad!!! We have an extra battery, but it has been missing for quite some time. Lucky for me we had the battery charger in the car, so I charged the battery while the kids played at the park. I had called Les to vent my frustration and he felt bad and left work early to help me finish the pictures. We were finally able to get the rest of the pictures and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

My next project was making a new blog header. I knew what I wanted, but wasn't exactly sure how to get it. I finally got something close, but I'm still not super happy with it. I don't know why I took it upon myself to do the blog header considering my husband designs web pages for a living and could have probably done it in half the time and had it looking fabulous. Actually, I do know why, it's because I'm very inpatient and didn't want to wait around for him to do it. He has promised to clean it up for me and make it look more how I had envisioned it, but until then I'm just going to leave my version for everyone to see. I'm so glad pictures are done!!!

I forgot one of my kids!!!!

Now, before anybody gets worried that I left one of my kids home alone or at the store or something, rest assured it's not that bad!!! However, we went up to Beus's Pond on Saturday to have some family pictures done and to also take individual pictures of each of the kids. So, kids being kids, they weren't all that cooperative with the picture taking, which of course left us quite stressed out. We left the individual pictures until the end and also took pictures of the girls together and the boys together. Well...as I was going through our pictures yesterday to pick which ones to print, I noticed that we didn't have an individual pictures of Kenzie. We got her picture taken with Brooklyn, but never had her pose by herself. I asked her about it yesterday to see if she realized we hadn't taken her picture and she said she didn't realize we had taken a picture of Cody and thought that we were only taking pictures of Kaden and Brooklyn. How sad is that!!! So, since the kids get out of school early tomorrow and I wasn't overly thrilled with any of the pictures that I got of them anyway, I am taking them all up to Layton Park to try again. Hopefully I will get better pictures of each of them since they won't be posing for family pictures and maybe I won't forget any of them this time :) Wish me luck!!!

Corn maze

We went to the Black Island Farms corn maze in Syracuse today and had a blast!! Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so no cute pictures to accompany this post, but I figured I could tell about what we did. We went as a ward so that we could get the discounted price, which definitely helps out when you've got four kids you're paying for!!! So the activities included a hay ride where everybody got to pick out a pumpkin, the corn maze, which is huge, the courtyard which had slides, a cow train, see-saws, pumpkin bounce house, animals, etc. There was so much to do, we ended up staying there for 4 hours. Brooklyn really liked the big slides, but of course couldn't go down them alone, so I got to experience them as well, which actually turned out to be pretty fun. We only did one part of the maze since it is pretty big and the kids were having a lot more fun in the courtyard then getting lost in the corn, go figure!! All in all in turned out to be a great day and I'm so glad we decided to go!!