Full Time

Yesterday I changed my employment status to full time. I'm going to be working mostly evenings and weekends (when Steve is home) and anticipate only needing a babysitter about 3 hours/week.
I am determined that my children will not feel get the short end of the stick from this new full time job status. With 40 hours less in my week I'll have to re-arrage the way I do things. There are so many things that a person does-- both necessary things and things for their own entertainment. I think that sometimes it would be easy for a person in my situation to make cuts from quality time with their kids. Not me. So, be it known that I plan on making the following cut from my life so as NOT to have to make cuts from quality time with my children:

1. Less time social networking. Limiting myself to only saturday mornings.
2. Goodbye baking. Baked breads are not a necessity right now
3. Cleaning while my girls are awake (I'll have to do it after they are asleep).
4. Exercising regularly : (
5. Volunteering for service things.
6. Time spent with friends and family.
7. Goodbye personal time.

We plan on this being a bit of a stretch on our family. But the fact that Steve gets done at noon 3 days a week will make it easer. Oh, and the way I see it-- my working 40 hours a weeks is going to be a TON easier on my family than my being pregnant 168 hours a week. Hopefully, I'll have 2 cute bundles of joy in about a year to show for it : )

Daddy's home

My little girls got there daddy back after a little more than a week. He was missed terribly. Lydia spent a lot of time searching the houses for her daddy. The funny thing is: the #1 place she would go to look for him was our bed. Probably because that is where she normally finds him in the morning : )
I feel bad for all of the women out there who have to deal with husbands who are gone a LOT more than mine is. Hats off to you. I don't know how you do it.

New Easter Tradition

I'm a big fan of tradiations. Thanks to my sister-in-law Erika I think we have a new one. She came over and we made fun little easter egg cake-pops and decorataed them. She got the idea from WWW.BAKERELLA.COM (we must give credit where credit is due). The pops are really cute (as pictured above) and she has all sorts of fun ideas for every holiday (I'm going to do the turkeys at thanksgiving). They are surprisingly easy to make too. The girls loved them.

Triathalon

This blog is to brag about Steve's triathlon he did on Saturday. He's now done a few of them (3?). He did it with his brother Drew and Sister-in-law Erika. I'm impressed-- I couldn't do it. I'll stick with running thanks. I would surely drown while trying to doggie-paddle 30 feet. But I do a "triathlon" every morning: My morning run, swimming through a sink full of dishes, and then a never-ending chase up and down the halls trying to get a diaper back on Lydia.

Punishment for doing the right thing.

When I started my new job I discovered a lot of very important rules that were being broken by both the family that I was assigned to, and the other nurses working for that family. I debated on whether or not I should inform my supervisor. I had been informed that one of these rules (which another nurse was breaking) was grounds for being immediately fired. So, after much debate I decided to inform my supervisor.
At the time I informed her, we discussed the fact that I still needed to have a good relationship with the family that I was working for-- so my supervisor said she would take care of the problem without letting anybody know that I had informed her of the situation.
Today I got a phone call from my employer. My patient's mom doesn't want me to come back again ever (just 3 days ago she told me that I was her and her son's favorite nurse). The person who called me acknowledged that is was because she found out that I had turned her and the other nurses in.
So where does that leave me? Without a job. They are working on finding me another patient, but the hours would be during the day instead of at night so I'd need to get a babysitter and I'd be away from my girls, and I'll also have less hours. Meanwhile, the nurses who broke the rules still has their jobs.
If you can't tell, I'm a little frustrated.

Easy Egg-free Eggnog

I love eggnog. Too bad you can only get it during the holidays. I learned to make homemade eggnog this past holiday season. It was good but it was a PAIN to make.
So, I came up with his recipe that it easy, egg-free, much lower in fat, and tastes great too (although not exactly like eggnog it is still very good)

Cambrie's Eggnog:
8 cups milk (I use have vitamin D milk and half reconstituted powdered milk--you can't tell!)
1 3-oz vanilla pudding mix (instant)
1/2 cup sugar
2 t vanilla
1/2 t nutmeg
Rum extract to taste
Sprinkle of cinnamon

Mix pudding and 1 cup milk in blender. Then add all other ingredients and mix.

Zoo pictures

Yesterday we went with some friends and got in free to the San Diego Zoo. We definitely had fun with our friends (and umbrellas) but I'm not sure my girls appriciated the animals at all. They were far more excited about the stairs and the leaves than they were about elephants or tigers.
Oh, I love sleeping children on the way home : )

Goodbye Disneyland

My season pass to Disneyland expires next week and Steve's is the week afterwards. Both of our season passes were gifts (from 2 different people) and we've had a blast. But honestly, I'm sort of glad that we're done-- it takes a lot of work to get 2 little ladies and all of their stuff to and from Disneyland once every 2 weeks! I think I've also been on teacups one to many times. Kiera's pass doesn't end until november so maybe we'll just drop her off at the gate.....

This is Kiera's rediculous hair-do, which was my attempt to get her tall enough for Soarin' Over California. Too bad the disneyland worker pushed her hair down. I was sorely disappointed-- I really wanted her to go on it! She wore huge shoes and huge ugly hair at disneyland and it did us no good!