The Orange Rhino Challenge

A few days ago I came across an article on Pinterest titled "10 Things I learned when I stopped yelling at my kids." This article instantly sparked my curiosity--being that I've really felt recently that I yell at my kids way too much. I clicked the link and started reading the article--and I instantly felt convicted. When did I turn into this? Sure, my kids are very well-behaved.. but at what cost? I realized that I was yelling at them for small things that could have easily been avoided. I hated that I was like this--and I knew by the time I was done reading this article that I was going to be part of "The Orange Rhino Challenge." Me not yelling at my kids does not mean that I wont be punishing them when its needed; it just means that I'm not going to lose my mind over everything. I'm a few days deep in this and I already feel a sense of relief; knowing that I'm not a monster, I'm not ruining my kids' childhoods, and I'm not a bad mom.

I think this is a terrific article and a great reminder for every mom (and dad) out there! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

You can read the article below, and also find it here. 


10 Things I Learned When I Stopped Yelling At My Kids

Someone asked me this past weekend, “So, what were your findings from not yelling for a year? Did you learn anything?” Huh. Pretty good question. And it got me thinking, “Well, what did I learn?” I’ll tell you this; I learned a lot, a lot more than I can possible fit in a blog post! So I share with you the top 10 things that I learned from my Orange Rhino Challenge where I promised to not yell at my 4 boys for 365 days straight.

1. Yelling isn’t the only thing I haven’t done in a year (399 days to be exact!)I also haven’t gone to bed with a gut-wrenching pit in my stomach because I felt like the worst mom ever. I haven’t bawled to my husband that I yelled again and again. And I haven’t heard my sons scream, “You’re the meanest, worstest, mommy in the whole world, I don’t love you anymore!” Yep, I learned real quickly that there are upsides to not yelling!

2. My kids are my most important audience.When I had my “no more yelling epiphany,” I realized that I don’t yell in the presence of others because I want them to believe I am a loving and patient mom.  The truth is, I already was that way…but rarely when I was alone, just always when I was in public with an audience to judge me. This is so backwards! I always have an audience – my four boys are always watching me and THEY are the audience that matters most; they are the ones I want to show just how loving, patient and “yell-free” I can be. I want my boys to judge me and proclaim, “My mommy is the bestest mommy ever!” I remember this whenever I am home and thinking I can’t keep it together; obviously I can…I do it out and about all the time!

3. Kids are just kids; and not just kids, but people too.Like me, my kids have good days and bad days. Some days they are pleasant and sweet and listen really well; other days they are grumpy and difficult. By the way, I am always sweet and never difficult.Always. Ha! And like all kids, my boys are loud at times, they refuse to put their shoes on, and they color on the wall, especially if it is covered in brand new wallpaper that mommy loves. So, yeah, I need to watch my expectations and remember that my boys are kids: they are still learning, still growing, and still figuring out how to handle waking up on the wrong side of the bed. When they “make mistakes” I need to remember that not only does yelling not help, but like me, they don’t like to be yelled at!

4. I can’t always control my kids’ actions, but I can always control my reaction.I can try my hardest to follow all the parenting tricks of the trade for well-disciplined children, but since my kids are just kids, they sometimes won’t do what I want. I can decide if I want to scream “Pick up your Legos! ” when they don’t listen or if I want to walk away for a second, regain composure by doing some jumping jacks, and then return with a new approach. P.S. Walking away and taking a breather can actually get the Legos picked up faster than yelling.

5. Yelling doesn’t work.There were numerous times when I wanted to quit my Orange Rhino Challenge, when I thought yelling would just be easier than finding deep breaths and creative alternatives to yelling. But I knew better. Early on, I learned that yelling simply doesn’t work, that it just makes things spiral out of control and it makes it hard for my boys to hear what I want them to learn. How can they clearly here me “say” “Hurry up, get your backpacks, your shoes, your jackets, don’t touch each other, go faster, you an do it yourself!” when it’s all a garbled, loud mix of intimidating orders that are making them cry?

6. Incredible moments can happen when you don’t yell.One night I heard footsteps coming downstairs well after bedtime. Although infuriated that my “me-time” was interrupted, I remained calm and returned said child to bed. As I tucked him in he said “Mommy, will you love me if I go to heaven first, because if you go first, I will still love you. In fact, I will always love you.” Tears still come to my eyes just writing that. I can guarantee if I had yelled “GET BACK IN BED!” we never would have had that sweet, very important conversation.

7. Not yelling is challenging, but it can be done!I am not going to say not yelling is “easy peasy,” but getting creative with alternatives certainly made it easier and more doable. And after yelling into the toilet, beating my chest like a gorilla, singing Lalala, Lalala it’s Elmo’s world, and using orange napkins at mealtime as a reminder of my promise, it certainly got a heck of a lot easier. Sure, I feel silly at times doing these things, but they keep me from losing it. So do my new favorite words: “at least.”  These two small words give me great perspective and remind me to chill out. I use them readily in any annoying but not yell worthy kid situation. “He just dropped an entire jug of milk on the floor…at least it wasn’t glass and at least he was trying to help!”

8. Often times, I am the problem, not my kids.The break-up line, “It’s not you, it’s me” rings uncomfortably true when learning not to yell.  I quickly realized that oftentimes I wanted to yell because I had a fight with my husband, I was overwhelmed by my to-do list, I was tired or it was that time of the month, not because the kids were behaving “badly.” I also quickly realized that acknowledging my personal triggers by saying out loud: “Orange Rhino, you have wicked PMS and need chocolate, you aren’t mad at the kids, don’t yell” works really well to keep yells at bay.

9. Taking care of me helps me to not yell.I was always great at taking care of others; I was not, however, always good at taking care of myself until now. Once I realized that personal triggers like feeling overweight, feeling disconnected from friends, and feeling exhausted set me up to yell, I started taking care of me. I started going to bed earlier, prioritizing exercise, trying to call one friend a day and most importantly, I started telling myself it’s okay to not be perfect. Taking care of me not only helps me not yell, but it also makes me happier, more relaxed, and more loving. Ah, the benefits of not yelling extend far beyond parenting! There is no doubt that I am in a better parenting AND personal place now that I don’t yell. Just to name a few unexpected benefits of not yelling: I do more random acts of kindness, I handle stressful situations more gracefully, and I communicate more lovingly with my husband.

10. Not yelling feels awesome.Now that I have stopped yelling, not only do I feel happier and calmer, I also feel lighter. I go to bed guilt-free (except for the extra cookie I ate that day, oops) and wake-up more confident that I can parent with greater understanding of my kids, my needs, and how to be more loving and patient.  And I am pretty sure my kids feel happier and calmer too. I know everyone wants to read, “I stopped yelling and not only do I feel great, but also my kids are now calmer AND perfectly behaved.“ Well, they aren’t. They are still kids. But, yes tantrums are shorter and some are completely avoided. Now that I am calmer, I can think more rationally to resolve potential problems before meltdown mania.  But forget perfectly behaved kids for a second. My kids are most definitely more loving towards me, and now tell me quite often “I love you Orange Rhino mommy!” and that feels more than awesome, it feels phenomenal.

Oven-baked Sandwiches

Today I'm going to share a recipe for a quick meal that Joe and I have sort-of become obsessed with. We first tried this when we visited some friends while they were camping; we ate lunch with them and they cooked this right on their barbecue. Joe and I never camp, but we still wanted to eat this--and it tastes just as great--if not better--cooked in the oven. Its so simple and quick and sure to please your grumbling tummy ;)

Ingredients:
1 French bread loaf
Lunch meat of your choice
Cheese of your choice
Mustard
Mayonnaise
Anything else you like on your sandwiches :)

First, grab your French loaf and preheat your oven to 425* F (or, if you're camping, fire up your grill)

Slice it up--but don't cut completely through--you want the loaf to still somewhat stay together. 

Put your lunch meat and cheese in every-other-slice (so that when you pull it apart it'll make sandwiches). *If you're camping, wrap the sandwich up in foil and place in grill, then cover grill and let cook.

Place in oven for between 5-10 minutes, or until cheese is melted. Let cool a few minutes, tear apart into sandwiches, and add your mustard, mayonnaise, and whatever else you like in your sandwiches! 

These are so tasty and so easy to make! If you're serving a lunch and you have no idea what to make--this will definitely become your go-to "recipe." :)

Summer Nights

Yesterday was such an amazing day! It started off with Joe letting me sleep in until 10:30--I didn't even know I was capable of that anymore! I got up, took a quick shower, then we headed outside to spend the day out by the pool. We love this little pool; it gave us the best summer ever last year, and its shaping up to do the same this year. Best part? It was only $20 at Target. We spent the day out by the pool, and when nap time rolled around and the kids fell asleep, Joe and I booked our anniversary trip for our upcoming 5-year wedding anniversary! 

Once the kids woke up, we ate a quick dinner then headed back outside (but for a bonfire this time). The kids always get excited when we do a bonfire--because they know that that means they get s'mores. Even though I'm a clean freak and hate when my kids are dirty, I absolutely love watching them get all messy while eating s'mores. I feel like its a right of passage for kids. All it takes is a few wipes to clean them up, so I usually don't stress about it. 

I love days like yesterday. No makeup on, hanging out at the house all day just spending time as a family--this is what I live for. I wouldn't trade my life for anything. I love spending these summer days with Joe and the kids, and although I'm so excited for Fall and all of the fun that comes with it, I'm trying so hard to just cherish these fun times. Fall will be here before I know it, so I'm loving summer while its still here. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our awesome day yesterday: 

Having fun in the pool! I love it when I get a real smile out of him!

Being silly <3

lol.

Sword fights with the bubble wands. 

Someone is excited for s'mores!

Such a big boy now!

<3

So freakin cute.

Her eyes kill me. <3

Ending the night with cuddles and kisses from daddy <3

Lil' Smokies Wrapped in Bacon

As you may have read yesterday, we were all at Joe's aunt and uncle's house celebrating his mom's upcoming birthday. I always love going to there house for a few reasons: we always have a great time, they have a beautiful house, and the food is always AMAZING. They go all-out. Yesterday his aunt made these bacon wrapped lil' smokies, and I swear I ate the whole pan of them (which would explain my 2-pound weight gain this morning.. yikes. Oh well, it was worth it). This is the ultimate party food-of-all-party foods. I'm having a party in a few weeks for my birthday, and I will absolutely be making multiple pans of these. Brace yourselves--your mouth is about to water. Best part of it all? Its 3 ingredients and SO easy. 

Ingredients:
1 Package (16 ounces) of Hillshire Farm Lil' Smokies
1 Package (12 ounces) of sliced bacon
1 Cup of brown sugar (packed)

Directions: 
Preheat oven to 400*F. 

Cut each bacon slices into 4 pieces. Wrap each Lil' Smokies link with a piece of bacon; secure with a toothpick. Place in a 13x9x2 inch baking pan. Sprinkle evenly with the brown sugar.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until bacon is crisp and sugar is melted. Cool slightly before serving.

*Tip. If you're looking for a lower fat version, use Hillshire Farm Turkey Lil' Smokies and turkey bacon. 

New Car! :)

Yesterday we bought a new car! Joe traded in his Honda Insight for a brand new Kia Optima. We had the Insight for a long time, and honestly we hated it. Yes, it got great gas mileage (with it being a hybrid and all), but other than that, it was awful. The tires were constantly needing to be changed, there were always alerts going off, and it had absolutely no power behind it. I will say, however, that I will miss being able to drive to Vegas on $40. This new car is fancy. It looks pretty on the outside, and the inside is awesome! I'm just excited to have a new car, honestly.

Today we are driving to Del Mar to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday with family. This is probably the only time Joe and I will ever fight about who gets to drive (he's driving there, I'm driving back). Joe's aunt and uncle (where we're going to today) have a beautiful house and a yard to perfectly match it. I'm excited to have some pool time today!

And for the big news: my birthday is 13 days away! I'm pretty sure I'm getting a new car as well; we will be going from a black-car family to a white-car family--the black cars just show WAY too much dirt! I've wanted a Nissan Cube for FOREVER--so hopefully I'll get one (Joe: hint hint).

I'm gonna keep today's post short and sweet because we need to get on the road soon.. but I hope you all have a fun Saturday! :)

Re-purposing Wine Bottles

I'm obsessed with re-purposing wine bottles. I've seen so many ideas on Pinterest for painting wine bottles and putting designs on them, but I've heard from friends that painting wine bottles is a huge pain in the butt. I love the look of jute, so I thought I would wrap jute around my wine bottles and go from there. Once I got going, I realized I wanted to make TONS of these so that I could have them out any time of the year. With each wine bottles taking about 45 minutes to wrap, I knew that would be a lot of work. I thought about how I could use the same wine bottles but still be able to use them as house and/or holiday decorations, and I came up with this idea! *This is super fun to make and not hard at all. If you're wanting a crafting day, this one takes the cake ;)

I started with 2 wine bottles, a beer bottle, jute, and my glue gun. You could use all beer bottles, all wine bottles, or whatever you wanted. I'm doing a 3-bottle set, so I liked the look of the beer bottle being in the middle--I love the shape of it. 

All wrapped up! Like I said earlier, each bottle takes about 45 minutes to wrap. Starting at the top, secure the jute with some hot glue. Once that's dried (about a minute), start wrapping the bottle. "Secure" the jute every now and then with some hot glue--just in case it starts to unravel, you wont have to start over. It'll also help secure it so that the jute doesn't move when you pick the bottles up. Be sure to wrap it tight! 

Here's my supplies to decorate it. Today I made a Christmas bottle decoration and an every-day decoration. The red fabric, white "plaques", cardboard letters, black paint and the paint brush are all for the Christmas bottles. The flowers are for the everyday bottles (I need to buy a few more supplies for the everyday bottles which I'll do before I finish posting this blog). 

I was supposed to be doing this craft with my sister, but she's been really busy lately so I just went ahead and did mine. Our Christmas bottles are going to say 'Joy' on them and I painted the letters black before attaching them to the bottles. 

Here I made cuffs. Wrap your fabric around your wine bottle until it fits perfectly. Then I used my hot glue gun to attach the fabric "plaques" to the material, then again used my hot glue gun to attach the letters. 

Here's my big idea: using velcro so that I could attach and take off "decorations" so that the wine bottles could be used year-round (it also will help with storage--I wont be storing a million wine bottles 24/7).  

Final product: my Christmas wine bottles. I haven't bought Christmas "flowers" yet (they aren't going to be flowers; they're going to be these bead things on a stick.. almost looks like a tree branch) because they aren't selling them at Hobby Lobby yet (next month!!), but these will not be empty. They are vases; you can put whatever you want in them.  

They'll look so cute sitting at the base of my stairs right when you walk in the front door. I cant wait to buy the stuff to put in them--I love the way these turned out! 

Just like that, I swapped out the cuffs and I now have an every day decoration that I can keep up year-round. 

(I'm not going to leave the flowers in there like that; I need to trim them down so that there isn't so much stem. I just put them in there to give an example). 

These turned out exactly how I wanted them to! They're a bit time consuming; I didn't do all of this in one day (although I'm sure you could if you wanted to). I plan on making a Fall cuff to attach, but I haven't decided exactly how I want it to look yet; hence, no Fall example. The great thing about these is that you can really customize them to fit your decor--and they look great! 

I hope you like it! Have fun! :)

Its a Wild Ride!

Do your kids ever drive you absolutely crazy? Wait--that's a rhetorical question: of course they do. Having two kids that are 22 months apart is both awesome yet awful at the same time. They play together, but they also fight non-stop. Madison will throw a toy at Maverick, he'll start crying and say that 'Madison is garbage..' Madison will then start crying saying "I'm not garbage, bubbas!" and then the whole "playing nicely" is gone. Both kids are in timeout; Madison for throwing the toy, Maverick for saying his sister is garbage--its a train wreck. Its a rare thing that we get a 30-minute stretch without one of them coming crying to me about something. Oh, and the word garbage is now a "bad word" in our house because Maverick uses it so much and it drives me crazy: Captain Hook on Jake and the Neverland Pirates: garbage. The bad guy on whatever movie we're watching: garbage. He doesn't like his lunch? Garbage. I. Hate. That. Word. At first I thought it was cute that he would throw stuff away in the garbage instead of the trash can ...but now that it's turned into this word, I can't take it! 

Yesterday morning,  Joe, Maverick and I were still asleep at the late hour of 5:30 am. Madison woke up, ran down the hall, swung Maverick's door open and yelled "AWAKE!!" while turning his light on. I could tell it was going to be an awesome day. They came into our room, I tried telling them to go play in their rooms--but that doesn't work so great. This morning Joe had to leave early for work, which meant that I could stay in bed however long I wanted because we wouldn't be waving 'bye' at the window. The kids woke up early, I told them to go play--and they actually did. For about 10 minutes. Its hard trying to sleep in when you're screaming down the hall to "share the toys! Be nice! Don't hit!" ...I ended up getting out of bed at 8:00--which is an improvement from our daily routine, but I certainly wasn't sleeping until then. I thought that once the "baby stage" was over I'd get more sleep?! Nope. I think that's what these kids do: they make you so sleep deprived that you're like a zombie throughout the day, then fight and fight and fight until you reach your breaking point.

Exactly. 

I know that this is all part of raising siblings--they fight and drive each other crazy, and when they're older they become best friends. Can we fast forward a few years? No, I'm kidding.. but really. I love the stages that they are both in--individually. Maverick is so smart and I cant believe he is starting kindergarten next year (2014). He is so cute and is constantly making me laugh. He's going to be amazing. Madison may throw fits non-stop, but when she takes breaks from throwing herself on the ground crying, shes actually really cute. We are just wrapped around her little finger--and it seems like anyone who comes in contact with her is the same. She'll be rolling around on the floor screaming for whatever reason, then stand up, compose herself, walk over to you and say "Mommy, you're my best friend. You're so pretty.. I'm really pretty too. I love you." Its just insanely cute. However, that screaming/cute ratio is about 90:10--so we try to enjoy it while it lasts. 

The kids are actually playing nice right now as I type this. Its always funny when we're going somewhere they're excited about--they INSTANTLY turn into best friends so that they can be excited together. "Hey, do you guys want to go get some frozen yogurt?" "YES! I love you Madison! Want to hold my hand?" "I love you too bubbas! You're my best friend!" Every. Time. Joe and I always laugh--its pretty funny to watch.

I always say that their age difference is what makes it difficult, but honestly I don't think it really matters. Siblings fight regardless of what their age gap is. 12 months, 24 months, 5 years difference--they'll still fight. Maybe not as much, but I don't think there's a way to avoid it. I guess the best you can do is sit back and brace yourself for the wild ride--and constantly remind yourself that it wont always be like this. Joe's cousin told us that he heard kids have "on and off years" --either odd or even. I think it depends on your kid whether they are good on the odd-or-even years, but so far its proving true. Last year was an AMAZING year for us with the kids, and this year is just full of fights and tantrums. We are currently in an even year, with the kids being 2 and 4. We're hoping that that analogy is true--and we can't wait for next year's "off year" to get here. ;)