So we did.  And it was ok.  It tasted like water with a hint of apple.  But, then the next day it tasted even more like apple.  And by the third day it tasted just like apple juice.  Only better! Because it wasn’t overly sweet.  So, we tried again.  Only this time we cut up some peaches and let them soak in the water for two days before we drank any.  And it was sooooo yummy!!  It taste like whatever fruit you soak it in.  But it doesn’t have the sweet sugary taste.

And now?  We have stopped buying juice all together.  And the kids LOVE our fruit water.  :o)  And its so much healthier.  Here is the latest one we made.  I cut up 3 lemons, 3 limes, and 2 oranges.  And let them sit in the jug of water for 3 days.  And Voila!!  It kinda tastes like lemonade a little bit.  But no sugar.  And we all love it.

Well, I am here to tell you my opinions only and how it worked for me. )  Because I know you all deep down are dying to know.  And the answer???  For me it was so much harder going from 1 kid to 2 then 2 to 3.  But wait! before you all freak out.  My situation is so much different (or maybe not). So let em tell you why.

When I was pregnant with Avalon, Dan and I lived in an apartment in La Habra.  And you all know how that goes.  I had to drag the laundry 1 mile to the laundry room. I had to walk 1 mile to my car.  Of course that is if it wasn’t towed.  My car got towed once a month in La Habra because there was never enough parking at our complex.  I probably paid close to $2000 in towing fees over 1 year.  As soon as I had Avalon I said I don’t want to do this anymore.  So, we moved. )

We moved to to an apartment in Orange.  Where I still had to park way far away form my front door.  But the laundry room was way closer. So, that made up for it I guess.  :o)  Then when Avalon was a year old, Dan and I decided to get pregnant again.  We both knew we only wanted 2 kids. (haha I know) So we said why not have them close together.  Lets get the baby years out of the way.  Plus they will be close in age and be best friends. (haha I know).  That time being pregnant totally sucked.  Dan had just moved over to a conductor.  Before, he worked in the yard.  Now he was gone for two weeks on training.  I was working at BP.  Which meant I was up all night with a teething one year old.  Or as I remember, a throwing up in the middle of the night one year old. lol.  I had to drop her off at daycare at 5am.  Then work 10 hours. Then come home and take care of her AND be pregnant all by myself.  Dan was gone a lot. Sometimes because they way our schedules worked out we could go weeks without seeing each other.  When i would bring groceries in from the car I would try to make Avalon walk so that I could carry as many bags as I could and make as little trips as possible.  But Avalon didn’t want to walk.  And it usually ended up with both of us crying in the parking lot.  I was never one of those people who would leave Avalon in the house while i went back and forth to the car. To me it was too far and something would happen to her.  So i dragged her back and forth.  And refused to carry her.  Which looking back i think that was my mistake. I should have just sucked it up and carried her.  Oh well.

Luckily for me, Nolan was the easiest baby ever.  :o)  But, Avalon was not.  She was never jealous of Nolan.  But, she was only 20 months when he was born.  She still wanted to be carried around.  She waned to help with the baby.  And she still needed me to do 99% of everything for her.  oh yeah, and we bought our first home and I was also packing up our apartment for over a month. Then we moved when Nolan was only 1 month old.  that was hard.  I don’t recommend that. lol

Also, I hate to say this.  But I think a lot of it was the facet that I was only 23 years old.  I now had a 2 year old and a newborn.  And while many people can do that just fine I was not one of them.  I was tired. All the time. I was tired of being tired. I wanted to sleep. lol.  And I was pretty much a single parent. Dan was always gone.  Or he was home sleeping and i was trying to figure out how to keep two kids quiet all the time. I got up at 4am everyday and headed to Orange County to work.  I got home at 5pm every night.  And didn’t go to bed till 10.  Then was woken up two or three times a night.  I had a ton of help from my mom. A ton. I don’t know what i ever would have done without her.  But it was still hard.

Now, with Logan everything was totally different.  Dan was home a lot.  It was two steps from my car to the front door.  Avalon and Nolan were old enough to help me with anything and everything.  I worked 10 minutes from my house. I didn’t have to be there till 8:30 and I was home by 5:30.  I didn’t have to watch Avalon and Nolan’s every move.  I didn’t have to worry about them chocking on toys or drowning in the bathtub.  During the day the kids were in school/preschool.  For the first time I didn’t spend my 6 weeks post partum packing and moving.  And i wasn’t rushing back to work at the 6 week mark.  And I didn’t care about sleeping or not sleeping anymore.  I think I was finally used to not sleeping.   I really enjoyed my entire pregnancy (minus the month where I had the flu) and I enjoyed the whole 2 months i was home with Logan and taking care of him.

And there is probably so much more I am forgetting about.  So, for me, transitioning to 3 kids was easy peasy compared to transitioning to two kids.  Having three kids is no where near as hard as I thought it would be.  But, also a lot of that has to do with the fact that Logan is a few years younger then his brother and sister.  I think if he had been right being Nolan by a year or even 2 it would have been a whole other story.

This year for the first time ever that anyone can remember, our cactus bloomed these super soft, super tough, beautiful flowers.  They were all over!

Then, my cute little flowers closed up and never opened again. (

But, the they turned into what I found out are cactus apples.

So, I wanted to see what the INSIDE looked like

This picture looks NOTHING like what it looked like in real life. lol.  I don’t know what I did wrong.  But the inside was neon purple. Not red.

I chickened out and was to scared to try it.  Have any of you ever had one? I wonder what it taste like?  It kinda looked like a pomegranate on the inside.  But, I don’t know.

But then, I had an idea.  I cut it up into scraps and made Avalon some cute headbands with it instead. )  They are not perfect.  But I am super happy with myself for being so crafty.  And for being my first attempt I think they  came out pretty good.

Here is the first one.  This one is mine and Avalon’s favorite.

Here is the 2nd one.  This one I made a few Yo Yo’s instead of flowers.  Super easy to make.  And hard at the same time.  lol.  It takes a lot of fabric to make a small Yo Yo.  I don’t know how I feel about this one.  I am wondering if I should make a few more Yo Yo’s to add on.  Or maybe buy some other type of embellishment.  Or if it is ok they way it is.  I can’t decide.  But Avalon loves it.  I guess that is all that matters.

This was my very first attempt at steaming veggies. And… uhhh….I totally over cooked all the veggies.  Everything was mushy.  But the kids didn’t care.  And it all tasted super yummy.  And now I know next time to cook the vegetables for only half the time. )

Sadly, I have noticed I am still in the same boat.  There are hardly any pictures anywhere of me even now.  But that is because I am very self conscience and HATE getting my pictures taken.  Hummm…. I am gonna have to try to be better at that.

Anyhow, for my Christmas/birthday gift right before I had Logan, Dan bought me a Canon Rebel XS.  I had a SLR film camera for a long time.  But I hardly ever used it.  I didn’t really know how to use it.  And it sat in a box in the closet for a long time. 

So, I had been telling Dan if only I had a DSLR I could take such amazing pictures.  It was getting expensive to keep taking the kids in to JC Penney’s every few months for pictures. lol.  So, Dan being the wonderful husband he is finally bought me a DSLR.

Right around the same time I got the camera.  Drew B. started Mom*Tog.  A website where she teaches you how to use a DSLR and gives hints on how to take better pictures.

Anyhow, I learned everything I know from reading Mom*Tog.  Before that I never even knew what a light meter was or aperture or anything.  I was always using the automatic mode.  I had taken a photography class when I was 19 with my sister.  But i quit after only a month of classes.  I hadn’t yet learned anything really. 

I always get frustrated with myself that I am not really doing any better with my pictures.  I am not by any means looking to start a business or anything.  But, I want to really see myself grow.  That is my only goal I have for myself.  The only lens I have is a 50mm 1.8 that i was given by my sister who bought it and then decided it wasn’t really her thing.  And it has a huge chip in the middle of the lens.  But, seeing how I am just taking pictures for myself of my kids, I just can’t justify spending money for a new lens. They are totally out of my price range.  Even the cheap ones. lol.

Anyhow, my point is, I am always telling Vicki or Dan or whoever that will listen, that if i just had a better camera, if I just had better lenses, if i just had photoshop, e.t.c.  My pictures would finally start to be better.  I am stuck in a rut because of all of the above. lol.  But Drew always says on Mom*Tog that if you can’t take great pictures with the cheapest camera and the cheapest lens, you wont always be able to take great pictures with the best camera and the best lenses.  That its about you and not your equipment.  That you can still take the best picture with a Canon Rebel XS with a chipped, cracked 50mm 1.8. lol.

But for me, i finally believed this when recently I entered a contest for the County of Riverside.  It was a contest for pictures of wildflowers.  While I did not win, I didn’t even make it as a finalist.  But two of my pictures were on the website and were featured pictures. )  And to me that was awesome!!!  I don’t even care that they said they are randomly selected. lol.  I choose to believe that if they were horrible they would have skipped right over them. )

Then back in June, I entered a photo contest that I saw on Kristi’s twitter.  And I won that one. )  Even though that one was family and friends voting.  lol.  I still saw one person who I did not know at all that voted for my picture! yay!!  Here was my winning photo.

Most of you I am assuming have heard of if not read Pioneer Woman.  Also like most of you probably, I have entered every single contest she has ever had since I started reading her in 2007.  That also includes every single photo contest she has ever had.  And then last Saturday I was reading through my reader while at work.  And I saw this photo as one of her pics for a water themed contest she is having.

Which is just awesome!!  I almost fell out of my chair.  I mean I am not a finalist or anything. But just making it on her website is awesome enough!!!  Within about 5 minutes I had a ton of emails from people telling me they saw me on there. I was so excited.

So, it just made me really finally believe that what Drew says is true.  You don’t need the best camera or the best lenses or even a non cracked bad lens. lol. You just need to know how to actually use your camera and have a little bit of confidence. 

Before I started reading Mom*Tog my pictures were all taken on the automatic setting. And I was thinking to myself what the heck. We spent all this money on a camera. And yeah the pictures look better. But not really worth spending what we did.

And now, these are my favorite pictures of the kids.  All taken on Manual:

(if only Avalon was in focus I think this would be my favoritest picture ever!!)

I am having a hard time getting the warm glowy sun flare pictures. I just don’t get it. I don’t know why I can get this. lol. Everyone makes it sound so easy.  This is the best I have gotten. And its not the look I was going for. This was on accident. lol

So, while I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn. I think I also have come a long way and have learned a lot. )

So, a big Thank you to Mom*Tog )

And on a last note, I used to always print out every picture and save it in a photo album.  I have probably 100 photo albums.  And I saved every picture on Snapfish.  And I burned every picture to a CD.  And Dan would kinda laugh.  And I would say what if something happened to the prints? What if a CD got scratched, lost, or broken, what if Snapfish goes out of business.  I need backups!!! lol.  Then I got an external hard drive for Christmas one year.  And i started saving everything on there. And stopped downloading my pictures to Snapfish.  And stopped spending tons of money every year printing out all my photos.  And then, one day, Logan was being fussy. And I was transferring pictures off my computer onto the hard drive. And right in the middle of it Logan ripped the hard drive out of the USB port and chucked it across the kitchen. Or, really about two feet.  And all my pictures were gone. My hard drive unfixable. And me too poor to get them downloaded on a new hard drive. ( 

So, after I cried for about 3 days.  Here I am back in the same boat I started. Me, with no pictures.  Then, I was reminded that blogger saves all the pictures you have ever downloaded onto your blog.  And I post way to many pictures over on facebook.  So, really I have about 25% of my pictures still.  Although they are not the best quality. I probably could print 4×6′s of them and that’s it.  But I still have them. )  And I am going to be back downloading every picture to Snapfish again.  And burning every picture to a CD again.  But I am still out 5 years of pictures of my kids.  (