To Build or Buy

I am in need of some opinions!!!!! As most of you know, our house has been up for sale for about two months. I have been told by several realtors that the market is dead right now but they think it will pick up around September so I am hoping that ours will sell before the end of the year. Anyway, we haven't really found anything in our area the size that we want in the price range that we want it but have talked to a builder and with everything that we are wanting it seems that we could go that route and it might be better. So give me your opinions - I know alot of you have built a custom home. What was your experience like? I have heard a lot of people that have built tell me that they will never do it again. My parents built our house when I was in elementary school and both say they wouldn't want to build again!

Answers

Do you stay at home with the twins or are they in daycare?

I do stay home with Braelyn and Bailey. I was the Director of our local domestic violence shelter and decided that my time would be better spent at home with the girls because they were born premature and I couldn't bare the thought of them being in a daycare at that point and I had really wanted to stay home with them anyway!!!!

How did you lose the weight from having twins?

Well first of all, I have a long way to go:) I had actually gained some weight right before I became pregnant which was a bad thing because then I gained 43 pregnancy pounds on top off the weight I had already gained:( Anyway, I got pre eclampsia and was pretty sick in the hospital and lost 35 pounds during my one week stay. I was able to lose the rest of the pregnancy weight by doing Body Combat, Boot Camp, and cardio training at my local Ladies Workout Express which I highly recommend. I still have a ways to go but am hoping that I will get there by continuing the gym workouts!

Where did y'all get the information for the Murdery Mystery Game?

I have been asked this several times and keep forgetting to get with Penny on the exact website that she found it on but I know that she did order the game online and there are several to pick from. We did Murder By Chocolate. It gave her step by step directions on everything. It was fun, fun, fun!

How did you and your husband meet?

Twain and I met on a blind date. I was the Director of a homeless prevention program at the time and a lady that volunteered for me regulary told me that she wanted me to meet one of her husband's employees. I wasn't all that thrilled at first because she told me he is a legume scientist (yes it sounds so interesting) but long story short a year later we went on our first blind date and have been together ever since for four years now!

What country do you plan to adopt from and what agency do you plan to use?

I have also had some private emails about this and love to talk about it any time I get the chance so please do not hesitate to ask me anything about foreign adoptions. Adoption is a passion of mine and we had planned to adopt at some point all along. We have chosen to adopt a child from Ethiopia based on a lot of reasons. Ethiopia has over 4 million orphans right now and many of them lose one or both parents due to health reasons and poverty so good, adoptive families is really needed right now for that region. After researching different agencies, we decided to go with Holt International. For us it was a great fit because they have a great African Program and they are highly respected around the world for foreign adoptions. The best part of it for us was the fact that they a Christian based. You can go to Holt's website and find a wealth of information about them if you are interested.

Questions

So I have seen on some blogs where people have put a post that encourages readers to ask questions. I thought with my blog being new and all that would be a fun post to have to for new readers to get to know our family at Raising Twins. So, ask away in the comment section and I will answer your questions on my next post. With us being new, I will probably have a whole two questions!!!! Anyway it sounded fun:)

Cousin Time

Mom and I loaded up the girls and Nan yesterday and headed to Edmond to visit some family. Jayli was staying with her Nana (my aunt) in Edmond for a few days and we don't get to see her often since she lives four hours away so we headed to Edmond to get some time in with her before she went back home. She is 7 months and really enjoyed the girls. She just wanted to get up and run with them so bad:) Bailey gave her several kisses throughout the day. It was such a fun day for all us girls to go up there. Nan is 89 years old so it is such a blessing for us that she is still in good enough health to travel with us. She is so much fun and enjoys going places with the girls:) She had a great time seeing her great grandaughter Jayli too!!!!

Murder by Chocolate

Tonight I went to dinner and a murder mystery party celebrating a friends birthday. I figured it would be fun but had no idea how fun the murder mystery part would be. Of course, I am a crappy actor and couldn't keep from laughing most of the time but it was hilariously fun. The scene was at a chocolate spa!


I highly recommend a murder mystery for a good night of laughs with your girlfriends! Girls, we must do it again sometime and especially now that we know what we are doing:)

Recipe

I have seen a lot of you bloggers put your favorite recipes on your blog. One of our favorite at our house is Mexican Dip. Twain is a big meat eater and doesn't like my healthy cooking that well so ever now and then I like to make something like this for him:)

You will need:
Around 2 lbs hamburger meat (we use our own from one of our butchered cows and it is two pkgs which should be around 2lbs)
1 can Rotel
1 can Ranch Style Beans
1 package of Spanish Rice
1 medium Onion chopped up really fine
8 oz of Velveeta Cheese
Pepper to taste

Cook your hamburger meat with the chopped onion and prepare your Spanish Rice according to package directions. Melt your Velveeta in the meat after it is ready before adding the rest of the ingredients or it is really hard to melt. Then mix it all together.

It tastes good with tortilla chips and is perfect if you are making a dish to feed a lot of people or want to eat on it for a couple of days!


Some things I cannot live without in my kitchen:
My Rada Cutlery. I have spent a fortune on all different kinds of knives and have found that Rada is my favorite and they are very reasonable. If you are in need of anything from then, you can purchase it now through this fundraising website and it will go to help my cousin Rilee for her competitive cheer team.
www.helpourfundraiser.com
Order # = 502549
Password = glitz
Another one of my favorite cooking utensils is my mix n chop from Pampered Chef. You can see it in the picture of my hamburger meat above. It is perfect for cooking hamburger meat (especially if you like yours fine like we do). It is only ten bucks and is the best ten bucks you will ever spend. If you would like to order one of your own, you can through one of the ladies at our church at:
www.pamperedchef.biz/kimscooking4u
If your order before June 14th, you can order through my online party. If you want to order afterwards then you can still order through her website.

Misc

I have been meaning to post several different topics and have just not got around to it so this one encompasses several things. First of all, Braelyn and Bailey started summer school at one of our local church's last month. They work with children who stay home to get them used to being away from mom for a short period of time. The girls are doing really well and have a great time. They have five kids in their one year old class and two teachers so it is a lot of one on one interaction which makes me feel a lot more comfortable then if it was a large group. I bought them some backpack leashes at Babies R Us last weekend so I can take them by myself and pick them up without getting one ran over!
Bailey ready for school

Braelyn ready for school


Another post I have been meaning to write is about our trip to the Fort Worth Children's Museum. We planned to meet Twyla on Tuesday in Fort Worth so she could pick up the boys since we had them a couple of days last week. Our intent was to go to the Fort Worth Zoo since Braelyn and Bailey have never been to the zoo but when we got there, we found out they were closing early that day and we didn't have time to go through the zoo so we decided to go to the children's museum. I highly recommend it for any age kids. They have a toddler room that has a lot of hands on interaction for the kids and they have a lot of stuff for the older kids too including a dinosaur bone dig. Here are some pictures from our trip there. I don't mean to bore you with so many pictures and details but I intend to make a blog scrapbook for the girls when they are older so I apologize in advance for my future posts as well:)

Beautiful Sight

I waited 26 years to see this sight:)



I am thinking about making our blog private since we share so many pictures of the girls on here and personal information. If you read the blog and would like to continue to have access then leave me a comment that you read it and I will add you to my list. If you aleady left me a comment on facebook then you don't have to again. Some of my family/friends have questioned me on how to leave a comment if you don't have an account. Just leave a comment as anonymous and sign your name at the end or click the name/url option and type your name in.

Thanks guys!

Memorial Weekend Part 2

Part 2 of our weekend begins on Sunday when two of the girls' cousins came up with Grandma Nancy and Papa Ole. They have 6 cousins but 2 of them come up quite a bit to play and the girls love it so much. They are such good sports with them even getting in the kiddie pool.




Grandma and Papa went back Sunday night but the boys stayed with us for a couple of days like they do every summer. We decided to take them up to our community water park on Monday. It was nice because so many people were at the lake for the long weekend it wasn't too crowded. The boys loved the water slides and it gave me a good excuse to slide down them too:) Of course their backs didn't hurt all night long like mine. Guess I am getting old..ha! We took Grammy along to help out with the girls in the water. They had a blast in the toddler area. Braelyn kept poing at the frog slide wanting to go down it over and over so we all took turns taking them down the slide.










After three hours at the water park, a trip to the pizza place, and then to Wal-Mart, the girls crashed so the boys and I watched a movie and made some cupcakes to decorate. I wasn't sure if they were going to like doing that or not but they actually had a really good time. Of course, they ate two that night but then they went home the next day and Twain and I finished off the other 10!!!!













I will post the last of our Holiday Weekend sometime this week.