Why didn't I do this sooner?

It just dawned on me a few days ago that William's bedroom is a lot bigger than my office. Both rooms are next to each other and they used to be the girls' rooms before William was born and then they moved into bedrooms downstairs.  He only goes in his bedroom to sleep at night. How did I let a little kid get the bigger space? He doesn't even have that much stuff! It is also the one room in the house that is coldest in the Winter and warmest in the Summer. A light bulb went off in my head. I grabbed the girls and we switched rooms. Yep, I kicked the boy out of the big room with a full-sized closet and put him in a smaller, cozier room. Would you believe that now he wants to hang out and play in his "new room" all day long? It was a very smart move. It took me 3 1/2 years to think of it but at least it's done. I am loving my new office space and William is enjoying his new bedroom. We both win! :)

I'm a mom and I lie

Today I was on the phone chatting with my buddy and of course that gives William the idea that he doesn't need to listen to me. I told him he needed to complete his map puzzle so that we could put it back where it belonged. He decided to stack the pieces and ignore me. I told him I was on the phone with his dad and said that daddy needs him to pack his puzzle away right now. Do you know the boy sprung into action immediately?! I asked him to pack the puzzle up several times with no luck. Here I go and say his dad says to do it and the job was done in a matter of minutes. Hmmph! Oh well, I guess it is good that he fears his dad and knows he better do what is expected of him or else he will have to suffer the consequences. Although I don't make it a habit to lie to my children, I do what I have to when the need comes about. It is so important for dads to discipline their sons. Like I always say, only a man can teach a boy how to be a man. I'm lucky to have such a fantastic husband to do just that with our son.

Do you lie to your kids when you need to?

A special project I am working on

For about 2 years now I have been compiling a small collection of some of my secret recipes for my children. I have this great plan that I will give the girls a cookbook as part of a graduation present. I have at least 6 recipes typed up and I even have a photo to go with each recipe. I was going to surprise them but I ended up telling them about it. It touched them so deeply and they had teary eyes and were so happy that I was doing this for them. Now the downside is every time I cook something they love, they ask me to add the recipe to the "book". Are they kidding me? I will be up to 100 before you know it! I am just glad to be able to pass along these recipes and hope they will do the same with their children. I really need to focus a little more on this special project since Chardie will graduate in a year and a half. It is very time consuming since my cooking style is so far from using actual recipes. It really takes a lot of thought to make the recipes make sense. My wish for the end result is a full-color, full-sized book made from waterproof photo paper filled with all of the girls favorites...most of all, filled with love ♥

Tidy Tots Review & Giveaway

I received a box of Tidy Tots disposable potty chair liners to review. Although William is fully potty trained, we still use the potty seat for him to take care of his 'business'. He is still a little leery of sitting on the big toilet so we keep his frog potty handy (yeah we still have it). To get a better understanding of how these potty chair liners work, check out the super quick video below:

   

These potty chair liners will come in very handy for our big road trip we are getting ready to go on over the holiday break. At least William will feel comfortable "going" on his regular potty and we don't have to worry about clean-up.
Each carton contains 16 super absorbent pads and 16 liners. The super-absorbent pad will hold 2-3 urinations. Up to 48 uses per carton! Only $8.99! Purchase them here.

Giveaway: Enter to win a box of Tidy Tots potty chair liners by letting us know why you want to try these out.

For extra entries you can:
~ "like" Tidy Tots and Momfiles on Facebook
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~ Tweet this giveaway and leave a link of your Tweet:

Win a box of @TidyTots1 potty chair liners from @momfiles http://www.momfiles.com/2011/12/tidy-tots-review-giveaway.html #pottytraining #giveaway

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Giveaway is open to US Residents only and will end at 9:00 pm EST on December 23, 2011. One winner will be chosen at random and contacted via email. Be sure to leave your email address if you do not have a Blogger profile. Momfiles is not responsible for any lost or stolen prizes.

I received a product sample for review purposes. All opinions are completely my own. 

Homemade is best

My 15 year old daughter Briahnna recently had a project for her Spanish class in which she had to bring in a food item from a specific country. She was assigned the country of Argentina. She browsed recipes and did her best to pick something that did not require us to have to buy too many ingredients. She chose Alfajores... basically two sugar cookies sandwiched together with dulce de leche (caramel). We almost considered purchasing store bought cookies and caramel but felt like it would have been cheating to do so. All in all, it was a long process of baking in batches and making the caramel filling. It took about 3 1/2 hours altogether. In the end it was well worth it. My daughter felt so proud of what she made and enjoyed her time in the kitchen. As for myself, I was so proud of my budding cook/foodie! She got to see and taste the difference by making something from scratch using high-quality ingredients. Her classmates and teacher enjoyed the cookies and she got an 'A' on the project.

She mixed up a batch of sugar cookie dough and I taught her a simple technique to make each cookie very uniform  in shape and size. 

The dulce de leche took about 2.3 hours to make! It came out really good though. This is one of those things that takes a lot of patience!