Hyde Happenings

I feel like life has been crazy lately but nothing really out of the usual is going on for us.  It’s just been busy ordinary days lately and blogging has been on the back burner if you haven’t noticed.  So how about some random Hyde Happenings?

·       I recently have gotten into essential oils.  So much so that I looked into purchasing vs. getting the kit and becoming a wholesale distributer.  I got the kit!  It’s the only thing that doesn’t make me feel nauseous to diffuse.  I’ve completely given up on candles, it used to be certain ones that make me sick but the last year, all candles have made me sick.  Diffusing essential oils is so much healthier!  I’ve done enough research and trying out of some that I’ve landed on the Young Living oils and so far it’s been great.

·       Speaking of scents making me sick… I was at my hairdresser a few weeks ago and she was mixing my hair color and she dropped the whole bowl of color on the floor!  I seriously thought this couldn’t happen to anyone but me with my sensitivities to smells.  I seriously thought I was going to faint or throw up from the fumes but I managed thru it.

·       Claire did so much during her 9^th month it’s crazy how quick she is growing up!  She crawls all over, stands on her own for a few seconds at a time, says ‘Dada’, waves and claps her hands.  That’s a lot for one month!  And I just noticed the other day for the 1^st time she had a little separation anxiety when I let someone else hold her and she was looking at me getting fussy and wanted me.  That was a first!  Normally she’d be fine being passed from stranger to stranger.

·       My social calendar is full!  I seriously can’t take on anymore social activities this Spring.  And it’s all due to hanging out with our neighbors, which is awesome.  Our monthly Bunco nights are turning into quite the party night.  We’ve made meals together, gone to birthday parties, dinner/drink dates, and gotten pedicures while the kids nap.  And now they are talking about going to Napa Valley.  It’s nice having people who live right in our neighborhood that we get along so well with and our kids are all the same age too which is a huge plus!

·       Poor Annie.  Oh her birthday can’t get her soon enough!  There are 15 kids in her daycare room and I swear they all have birthdays in January and February and every day she wakes up and asks if it’s her birthday.  She is so incredibly anxious for her day to come.  I’m actually happy that her birthday comes before Claire’s as our plan is to celebrate with her the weekend of with just us and then come Claire’s birthday we will have an official birthday party for both.  So she kinda gets celebrated twice, which I’m sure she will love!  In the meantime, she’s being an amazing sport with everyone else’s birthdays that seem to happen bi-weekly around her.

·       I’m done cleaning.  Just done!  When I’m not working at my full-time job our weekends are busy.  The girls are very needy of every second of our free time.  I have zero time for deep cleaning.  So things are changing at Casa De Hyde.  We hired a house cleaner (whose been cleaning for the last 3 hours as I type) and we bought a Roomba.  We already know someone who can mow our yard this summer.  Our time is so limited lately, and I’m already happy to have a few less things on our to-do list going forward even if it does cost us.

·       I did the HyVee meal prep with my neighbors recently and it was awesome!  We choose 7 recipes (a recipe per participant) and we showed up on a Sunday at 1 pm and they had all the meat for the meals cooked and prepped, all the ingredients for each of our 7 meals laying out on individual tables with all the ingredients right there ready to go.  All we did was combine the ingredients into freezer safe containers.  For instance, I made 7 chicken tamale casseroles and each of us took one home and someone else made 7 of another recipe and so forth.  And then HyVee did all the clean-up of our mess.  Amazing experience!   Each meal is supposed to yield 4 servings but I’ve already gotten 6 servings out of the meals we’ve ate.  And the whole thing cost $97.  Not bad at all!  There is no way I can make 7 very different meals in 1.5 hours, very time effective, which nowadays I’m all about my time!  It’s nice having meals all planned out and ready to just throw in the oven or crockpot.  

·       We are getting rid of our cable.  It’s been a long time thinking about this but we don’t watch TV hardly at all.  I watch the Bachelor on Mondays, otherwise I watch maybe an hour of tv in total thru the rest of the week. Every night we come home, make dinner, do baths and play with the girls in their bedroom until bedtime.  And then I usually read a book while Aaron pulls out his computer and works.  Our TV just never turns on anymore and when it does it’s for cartoons.  So we decided we still can’t live without TV really so we tried out the Playstation Vue’s free trial and that’s what we are switching over to.  And really it’s pretty comparable to our cable, we still will get HGTV, Food Network, Bravo and the locals for me and Aaron still gets all his sports channels and it is going to cost us 75% less per month!  Huge! Peace out Direct TV.  This is also how I justified to Aaron to get a house cleaner, just a little repurposing of funds!

That’s all I can’t think of!  Also, Aaron and I have been depending on our babysitter a lot more making a point to have date nights several times a month.  We have a date night tonight actually, JohnnySwim concert for the win!