The best ever parfait

Honesty time- this is not my recipe. This recipe came from Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman). It is a recipe for her Best Ever Yogurt Parfait. Let me tell you first hand, I would lick this stuff off of an old boot. It is divine. Ive made it twice in the last week and my kids told me that I was the best mom ever!!!! So if you want to be the best mom, or dad, EVER... make this!!! This recipe makes 4 good sized parfaits.

16oz plain (i used vanilla) greek yogurt
1/2 C heavy cream
1tsp vanilla
1/2 C brown sugar
assorted berries

Wisk together the yogurt, cream and vanilla. sprinkle the top of the mixture with brown sugar. It is perfectly fine to have clumps of sugar. Do not mix the sugar in!!! Cover it with plastic wrap or foil and let it rest in the fridge for half an hour. After you take it out of the fridge it will look like this.

Now, it tastes just fine out of the bowl this way. So if you forgot berries, just eat it like this. If you do have the berries, spoon a bit of this in the bottom of a cup. Don't mix it all together because you want the swirls of the brown sugary syrup.

RIGHT!?! It looks so good.


Then a layer of fruit of your choice. I used blueberries and raspberries. After each layer of fruit, add a layer of yogurt. Its a parfait. Really not that difficult. The finished product should look something like this.

Look at that syrupy marbling, fruity, creamy, sweet goodness!!!! Its like a mouth orgasm. Try it tonight and after your fingers have stopped trembling, pop me a comment and let me know what you thought. Enjoy and as always, thanks for reading!

Superwoman in yoga pants!

The last 2 days have been pretty... whats the word.... crazy.
Sometimes, okay most times, when I go to sleep my brain won't stop thinking. I think about the most absurd things and almost always bother my husband while he is trying to sleep, by asking him these absurd questions. Hey, i'm not getting any sleep, why should he? (only joking. I let the poor guy sleep so at least one of us is a functioning adult the next day). So the other night my brain wouldn't stop and as I am finally drifting off to sleep my brain shakes me awake to ask "have you checked if your drivers license is expired". Why no brain, I havn't. My birthday was nearly 2 months ago. I might want to check that.... in the morning. So as typical, 3 days pass before I remember to look and I finally do and go figure, my license expired on my bday. Awwwww CRAP. My husband works 7am to 5:30pm, and conviently the DMV is open 9am to 5pm. You know what that means right? I need to load up my brood of kids and take them with me to the DMV. Here in the heart of oil country, EVERYTHING is always super busy. I was absolutely dreading the trip but I knew it had to happen. Yesterday I wake up and look out the window. Its flipping raining. Perfect day to do this. So I get the kids ready, get them loaded up in the car to try to get there before the lunch rush and put the car in reverse. My daughter squeaks out from the back seat "mom, I have to go potty". The fact that she is speaking quieter than a church mouse isn't what bothers me, alright it does, but it isn't what bothers me most. I just told her to use the potty and she had a tantrum because "SHE DIDNT HAVE TO GO!!!!!". Lesson learned- MAKE the kids go potty before leaving the house. By the time we got to the DMV it was lunch rush, my kids were hungry and I was realllllly dreading this. We ran to the building in the rain (so much for doing my hair and makeup. Damnit, I was determined to have a decent photo this time). A gentleman held the door for us and my outlook started looking a little brighter. We walked in and grabbed a number. As I look around for seats I realize there are 3 available, but not together. A couple of guys must have seen the look of hope slide off my face because they instantly got up and demanded we take their chairs. As hope flooded back into my face a woman across the room said "maam" (I hate being called that btw. It makes me feel old). "Maam, you need to fill out one of those forms first". She was helping me and I was beyond grateful. It would have been a crying disaster if I had waited for my number to be called only to find out I had to take a new number and fill out a form first. Thank goodness for her. I filled out the form, handed snacks out to my 2 oldest kids and took out some disney maps I got in the mail. They were more than happy to just look and point out the cool things on their maps. They were actually behaving! Sooner than I anticipated, our number was called and we were in and out of there in 30 minutes. It wasn't as bad as I thought and I silently scolded myself for looking on the negative side.

Que today's adventure and the reason for the title.

Yesterday I got a slip in the mailbox which means I have a package that I need to pick up at the post office. Why is it that I order something, shipped ups. UPS ends up transferring to the post office and the post office just leaves a slip? Are they not allowed to leave it on my deck? Can I request them do this because post office trips with 3 kids under 5 is insane. I digress. I had to go pick up a package today, it was my daughters birthday gift. So the kids eat breakfast and I get them ready to go. I don't even bother putting real people clothes on. Instead I am wearing a pair of yoga pants, running shoes and my husbands sweatshirt to cover my butt. I use my hands to put my knotted hair into a sort of messed up ponytail. Again I am trying to avoid lunch rush because, as I said, everything here is always busy, and again I arrive at lunch time. Hey, at least this time I remember to make my kids use the bathroom before we leave. We get to the post office and squeeze into the last space in their cramped parking lot. I am constantly fearful that my kids are going to go running off into the road and get hit so I constantly remind them to keep a hand on the car at all times until they reach the sidewalk. I walk them around the car so I can get the baby. I put on my handy dandy ring sling and scoop him up. I put him in the sling while standing on the sidewalk and I promise the kids that if they are good they can get a chocolate malt with lunch, which will be fast food because its getting late. I also have to send off a package. We wait in line, while my kids play under this table in the middle of the room that holds all of the shipping labels. I tell them repeatedly to get away from that table and stand like good kids. 15 minutes later they listen. 1 minute later and its our turn. I get everything done. Package picked up, package shipped off and a silly card for my husband purchased. I didn't need the card but it was too cute to pass up. On the front it says "Sometimes I don't know why I put up with you" and on the inside it says "oh yeah, because you put up with me". I told you, it was cute. I balance a baby on my hip and a box, fancy waiter style on my 90 degree arm, while telling my kids to follow mommy like duckies. I get my kids safetly in the car and buckled in, and I triumphantly text my husband  "I DID IT!!! I'm basically superwoman" We get to the resturaunt, order some food and take it home. As we are passing the mailbox I see that the mailman has been by so I check the mailbox and there it is. Another pinkish orange pick up slip....
facepalm
I give up. I let my kids eat their food in the car, eat my food in our driveway and start heading back to the post office. Luckily there is a spot available so I take it. Safely get my kids out of the car "keep your hand on the car at all times", forget the darn sling at this point. I just don't care anymore. Carry my baby in "follow mommy like duckies kids" and step into line. Again my daughter starts playing under the table and again I tell her not to. My arm is starting to tire at this point and I am starting to care now. I should have brought the sling. Finally it is our turn and I resist the urge to cry as the man behind the counter says "hey, weren't you just here?" and as he goes back to get our package I hear a loud THUD and a couple of people say "ouch I bet that hurt". I turn around and oh lord, its my daughter. Despite all the times I told her to stay out of that table, she decided to go under it and jump. She smacked her head. Of course she starts screaming as if someone were murdering her. I get her calmed down and our package is handed to us. I look out the window... raining. Spectacular.... "ok kids, follow mommy like duckies" "keep your hand on the car at all times" and I get my wet kids safely buckled into the car. They of course use this time to remind mommy that she forget to get them a chocolate malt from the resturaunt. I take a deep breath and blow it out. I turn around and calmly tell them that they were sold out of malts. We go home.

Holy Hiatus!

I came here to realize that my last post was just after I found out we were expecting baby number 3! He will be a year old in a couple of weeks. He was born 2 days after my Sons 4th birthday. We named him Connor Mason Roy. He is a spitting image of his daddy and older brother. Life with 3 kids is... INSANE! Im either breaking up a fight, distributing snacks, digging things out of mouths, disciplining or chasing kids around all day. Its a wonder I find time to clean, and blog. Ok, I don't clean as much as I should. Laundry and dishes pile up pretty quickly now.
In my last post I was SO worried about finding a bigger place. A couple of weeks after that post we signed up for housing through my husbands job. We also realized a lump in my daughters throat wasn't going away. It looked like she had an adams apple. We took her to the ENT specialist and he told us that it is he thyroid. He explained that when she was forming in my belly, he ttongue grew out of there and there was some tissue left in there. A cyst if you will. There was a chance that it could eventually grow into cancer. In feb 2012 she ended up having surgery to remove the cyst. I think I had a harder time with the surgery than she did. She really was a trooper and hasn't had an issue since. Then we got the news that we got accepted into housing back in Williston (2 hours away). This was great news because we were going from a 2 bedroom 1 bath trailer, to a 3 bedroom 4 bath townhouse and my husband wouldn't have to drive the crazy 4 hour commute. March 1st we moved back to Williston. What a relief it was! We then had to figure out what in the world we were going to do with the trailer. We were paying about $1k a month for the trailer/lot rent, and over $1k for the new place every month. Money got really tight and during weekly visits to the mobile home (again, 2 hours away) we found out that people have stolen everything from our yard. Once we pulled up and there was a woman with a screwdriver trying to pry the back window open. We showed it to a few people and had extra keys hanging on the kitchen wall, and someone that was looking at the home, stole the keys. So we had to change the locks.
In June we rented the trailer out to my fathers co-worker who had 7 kids (jeeesh!) and we told him that we would pay first months rent and bills. Despite what my family thinks (i'll discuss that later) we are good people who help others out. We wanted him to get settled in and stock up on groceries. I guess my dads company was paying for them to stay in a hotel but couldn't afford it any longer. We had him sign a contract for 9 months, and if he were to miss 3 payments in a row, he would be evicted and still charged for the entire 9 months of rent. Big surprise, he never paid us. We never got a single penny from the guy and he was evicted a couple of weeks before our son was born. The stress we were under affected my pregnancy and I had to be induced for his safety and it ended up as an emergency c-section. We evicted him and never got a penny. The condition of our trailer was depressing. He had kicked holes in the walls. His kids wrote all over the walls. There was animal hair and kitty litter everywhere. He had numerous animals there and the front of the oven was ripped off of the unit. What a mess. We ended up not taking him to court. At this point we couldn't afford it. So he got off scott free and that makes me so mad. Im sure karma will bite him in the ass at some point.
Against better judgement we rented through the winter to another of my fathers co-workers. He paid every month on time, but was even dirtier than the first guy. He moved out in June 2014. The state of our trailer was awful. The first guys destruction paired with this guys lack of cleaning made this home uninhabitable. He didn't even move out his stuff. There were spiders, webs and mouse droppings EVERYWHERE!!! We told him that he needed to clean the whole thing out and he did. I am happy to say that as of this past Saturday, the mobile home is no longer ours! WOOOOOOHOOOOO!!!!
In July 2013 my neighbor threw me a baby shower. She invited my family and none showed. I took a large break from talking to them. I deleted all family from my facebook and vented my frustrations to my friends there. I forgot to delete someone and they told my brother about it. I didn't exaggerate anything. I spoke the truth. I am nothing if not honest. My family came down on my hard about it and went even as far as writing my friends individually and explaining that I am a liar and they are good people etc (which my friends didn't tell me about until later). To make a long story shorter-ish, my brother called my kids "fucked up" and "bastards". He wished that my abusive ex boyfriend would have killed me or I would have killed myself as a depressed teen. My parents support him no matter what he says to me and demand that my husband apologize for speaking to him unkindly. We no longer speak to a single member of my family, immediate or extended. My kids will grow to never know their Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents or cousins. When I made this decision, it hurt, bad. I cried for days on end, as if my family members were all killed. Ive told them that I don't want them in my life, or the lives of my children. My father still showed up on my doorstep trying to disprove my reasoning, without success. I told him that when my kids are old enough, I will tell them the truth and then they can decide if they want any contact with them. Growing older and having kids of my own REALLY made me realize that the way I was raised (pushed aside and abused) was not normal and I can't figure out how anyone can treat their kids the way my parents treated me.
My husband has been promoted a couple times since moving here and he is higher up in the company and getting to where he wants to be. At this point, I would be perfectly happy moving anywhere in the world with my own little family.
The crafting has taken a back seat since I had my youngest but now that he is getting older, I am finding more time to do it. I primarily sew and crochet now. I made these baby booties the other day

 

 How cute are they, seriously! I have a few friends expecting babies in the next few months, so ive made a few pairs of these. The grey ones pictured, some purple cream ones, and now a batman themed pair. They are pretty fun to make.

The last smash cake I made was for my neighbors son. His party was Mickey themed....

And here is a blurry pic of my step daughters cake this year.



She loved it.
Now in the next month and a half, I have a son turning 5, 2 days later my youngest turns 1 and then my daughter turns 4.  My boys are having a pirate themed party and my daughter wants a Frozen theme. go figure. So I have a few cakes to figure out and pretty quick.

Heres hoping that your lives are far less complicated than mine.
I will definitely get on here more often now.