Cloth Diapering

I know! It sounds so horrid and I have gotten a TON of grief about it... but we are doing it. We have been for two and a half weeks and LOVE it!!! But its not quite what you think it is. I PROMISE! There are no diaper pins and there are no nasty buckets of soaking poopy diapers. They are super adorable and super easy and even mike likes them! They go on just like a disposable.

So why are we cloth diapering...?

Well, a while back Maeli got a really bad diaper rash. It was like a blistering sore and it was all over! And we treated it with diaper rash creams but it just wouldnt go away. It took a few weeks of her screaming every time we changed a diaper before it got better. At the time i just thought it was a normal diaper rash but about a month ago i read something about how pampers diapers were causing chemical burns on babies. So i was just reading about it and it showed a pic of a chemical burn and it described what it was like. And i pretty much knew that that is what she had. So then i looked into what kinds of chemicals were in these things that they would cause a CHEMICAL BURN on a babies butt. Well that was enough for me to question our diapering methods. I found out that the chemicals in diapers are the same one that were made illegal in feminine products because they cause TSS. And there are tons of other things in them that are questionable to have near a babies parts. Including the dies and the bleach that is used in them. So i start to talk to mike about it and with resistance he agreed to let me try it. So we got two diapers and i loved it. SO then i ordered two more and still loved it. so then i made 21 more and they are all so adorable and we are loving it all!!!

Another reason that CDing makes so much sense for us is the cost factor. I did the math and figured out how much we would save with Maeli if she potty trained in a year from how. And just her alone we save $450. Well these diapers can also be used on our next child if we ever have one. So that will save us about another $1500 there and so on with each kid we have. So yeah.... the money factor is way worth it.

And no... its not gross

We shake the poop off into the toilet and just throw it in the wash! We never touch anything poopy or nasty. Super easy and they come out super clean. Maeli loves them too. We have put a sposie on her for when we go to other peoples houses or if someone is watching her and she wines about wearing one. She will bring you a cloth and ask for it to be put on. They are super soft and they do keep her bum dry. The inner fabric wicks it away from her skin and pulls it down into the other fabrics. They can stay on just as long as she was in the disposables too. And she has goes all night with no leaks! I have heard that kids potty train quicker with them and also they do not cause diaper rashes because the skin can breath in cloth. So all benefits for us!

Well anyways... Just thought i would share with you all my latest adventure! We are officially cloth diaper converts and we are loving every minute of it!!!

Temples, Tinkles and Thanksgiving

I just love this time of the year! I love all of the family time that i get and i love the warm snuggly feeling you get sitting inside and looking at the snow. Although i do hate the snow! I keep hoping that life will slow down here one of these days but it seems to keep busy still. Seems like we never have a free day even on the weekends ( and that is due to mike always at the BSU football games on the weekends). We have a few things that i needed to update this thing about so i thought i would write a post :)

First of all, Mikes on year baptism date is coming up! And you all know what this means. We have been looking forward to this day for a very long time! We were planning on going to the Boise temple to get sealed and take out our endowments.... but then i couldnt bring myself to get over my lifelong dream of going to the Nauvoo temple. So after many weeks of going back and forth about if we wanted to do that to all of our family ( make them either pay for plane tickets and go or just miss out on it all together) We decided to just do it! I dont wanna regret not going because i wanted to make everyone else happy! Although we love all of our family and friends who would have come, I just cant get over the thought of how special Nauvoo will be. You see... my grandparents went on thier mission to Nauvoo many years ago. Before they came home, they announced that they were gonna rebuild the temple. I remember my grandma telling me and my sisters that she wanted one of us to get married there so that she will have a reason to go to visit it. Well she passed away before it was even dedicated and my grandpa has passes since then too. But i always dreamed about keeping this promise to them. I was reading thought an old journal of mine from when i was little and i even said in there that that is where i wanted to get married. So we are gonna do it! It will be the most special thing ever!!!! I know that my grandparents will be there with us! But the thing that i am most excited about is having Maeli there! It makes me emotional just thinking about it. So our date that we are going though is January 11th. (my mom tried to get us to play the number game when we got married 8/8/08 but we did 8/9/08.... so this time i will make her happy and it will be 1/11/11 :) )

Maeli also has gone potty on the toilet! We got her a little potty chair and I had mike help me put her on it. We were just gonna let her sit on it and giver her candy and do the potty dance just for sitting on it the first time. I wanted her to feel like it was a cool thing to sit on the potty and want to do it again. So we sat her on there and she smiled and we did the potty dance and gave her candy! Then she stood up and mike looked in the potty and there was a little yellow liquid!! We couldnt even believe it! We have no intentions of potty training her yet (potty training sounds like a dog. I dont wanna train my daughter but teach her!) We have no intention of potty teaching her yet but did wanna familiarize her with the potty. So that was a huge success!

Another thing that is on our minds is Mikes blood tests. He had some blood work done and they came back a little alarming on a few things. Nothing too big to get scared of yet but enough to think about it. He has signs of the beginning stages of hypothyroidism and also has low platelet count. They are thinking this is because of the medications that he has been on since he was 16 and so we may be switching to a new medication. He has another blood test in a few weeks to see if they are going down or maintaining. So nothing too serious yet but its on our minds. So we will see what comes of it with his next dr. appt.

There isnt much else going on really. Thanksgiving in tomorrow and we are going to both the grandmas houses for that. We are also going to get a tree on Saturday. Mike already started putting up lights on the house and getting the Christmas stuff out. We love this time of year because it is so magical!

Trunk-or-treat!

We went to the trunk-or-treat last night and it was tons of fun. Our ward had a chili cook-off and so we got to try all sorts of chili and then they had a spook house and a cake walk and then trunk-or-treat outside. I found Maeli a costume at goodwill for $5 and it was the cutest thing ever! It was a little duck costume. She was so adorable waddling around with the big duck butt! It took some time to get used to but after a while she was loving the costume. When we took her out to trunk or treat it didnt take her long to catch on to the fact that everyone was giving her candy! So she was just walking up to people holding out her hands and asking for more. She was so super cute and i loved her costume this year!

Sweet memories

Our little girl is growing up too fast! It is so crazy how much she is starting to understand! She has been learning how to fold her arms for prayer and it is so cute! We havent really taught her but she has just picked up on it from watching us do it. So the other day she gets up to the table and stands on a chair. She put her sippy cup down on the table and folded her arms and started mumbling away! Then said "Amen" and took a drink from her sippy! It was the cutest thing ever and one of those moments where you are so glad that she picked up on a good habit of yours instead of a bad one :) lol!! I was so proud of her though! I truly am blessed with such a beautiful and special daughter of God. She brings so much happiness to our family and we feel overwhelmed by God's love for our family! there is nothing better than when she wraps her little arms around my neck and gives me a big sloppy kiss! Or when she runs to me with her arms stretched out calling me momma and wanting me to hold her. Being a mother is the most amazing job in the world!

Maeli also loves the water! We have been going swimming a lot at the Nampa Rec center! She is such a hoot in the water! She tries to run and swim and then almost drowns! But she giggles and splashes and it so much fun!


We also got a chance to go to Linder Farms in Meridian. It is a corn maize and a bunch of other things. It was so much fun! I know it has been a while since i have posted pics so here they are!!!

Our big girl is now sitting at the table with mike and I. We took her trey off her high chair and moved her to the table! She loves it there too!

Maeli loves her kitty! she carries her around everywhere and is always petting her and kissing her. We also have a boy kitty that is white but he doesnt let Maeli carry him around like a rag doll like the girl does. They are so funny to watch though!!

Just another Rankin life update

Not a whole lot has been going on. What can i say... we have a busy but boring life. Since my last post in July we have had our 2nd anniversary. We went camping at strawberry again with my family and have just been enjoying life. We recently got a membership to the nampa rec center so we have been going there on our free nights. We have lots of fun playing there with Maeli and just working out together. We also were given a little kid bike seat to go on the back of our bikes so we have been going on bike rides at night too. We got a minivan which has been in the shop since like the first day that we got it! lol. And we have been doing yard work. We got three trees to go in our back yard which i absolutely love!! It feels so nice back there now there is some privacy.

Maeli is growing up so fast. She is a little hoot and she is a wild thing. She gets into everything but always does it with a cute little grin that I just cant seem to get mad at. She is getting in her molars so she will have a total of 12 teeth!! Crazy! She is also a climber and so we often have to get her off the of the dining room table and out of the laundry hamper and a number of other places that she climbs into or onto and cant get down. She is sweet as ever though and we are so blessed to have her in our family.

Since the obam health care thing that passed, mike has had to do a lot of extra work to get ready for this friday when it all takes effect. He will no longer be able to take more than one patient at a time so he will have to work longer days and get fewer patients taken care of. This means that he cant do home health anymore which we were enjoying the extra money from that. But it will all be okay because he will have to work longer hours so it will kinda make up a little of that extra we were taking in. We were hoping to do lots of home health to get all our debt paid off but it will just take a little longer now. Mike is doing his last class to get his bachelors degree too so he keeps plenty busy between work and school. Oh yeah... and he has season tickets to boise state games so he is always watching thier games of checking up on the other teams they will play blah blah blah..... I am getting a little sick of football and the season just started!

As for myself.... i have just been enjoying life. I have spent lots of time crafting in my craft room and have been making lot of cakes too. I have started teaching maeli scripture stories with the living scripture dvd's. We usually watch them and color a page that goes along with the story. She loved it too! She has been so into the movies and she loves to color. I am also teaching myself american sign language through library resources and online websites. I think its just so fascinating!! I also got to spend some time with Emiley and my mom and sister for the Time Out For Women thing they did her in Boise. It was SO much fun!! We got a hotel room and spent the night away from kids and our hubbys. It was a nice break and we have a lot of memories that we made from that weekend.


Well that is pretty much our lives in a nutshell. We really dont have a lot going on these days. But for some reason we always are super busy. We are still settling into our house and into our ward and neighborhood. We really do love it here in Nampa. We love that we are so close to everyone and everything and that we get to visit family so often. It is all starting to feel more like home.

P.S. Sorry i dont have many pictures lately. We first lost our camera in the move and then when i fould it i couldnt find the charger. So we finally found the charger and then we realized we didnt have the battery for the camera. But FINALLY we have all of the pieces and have been taking pics that i will get posted sometime. :)

I wrote this a little while ago and just found it. Thought i would publish it :)

Mike and I just had our second anniversary! It seems like we have been married forever! Maybe its just like that because we dated for two years before we got married so we have been together forever! Anyways... since Brittany and Adam were married on the same day 5 years before us, we had a double date to the Melting pot. They are closing in a week so we thought that we should get in before they are gone. It was a great night and we had a lot of fun. I would probably never go back there because it is so expensive for like no food but it was really a great time. Dessert was the best though! I would go back just for the dessert!

We have been settling in great here in Nampa. We love it here and we love our ward and mike loves his job. We havent been doing much but have been super busy. Dont know how that works but that just how it feels. We got a second car finally! A mini van. Not my first choice but it is practical for our family. Its in the shop right now because it broke down on us on our way back from a camping trip. LOL!!

Maeli is getting big and has learned how to open the front door. She is starting to talk a lot more although we still cant understand what she is saying. But she knows exactly what she is telling you! She is growing fast and getting a lot of hair. She is so sweet though and we just love having her around. She keeps us on our toes and entertains us well.

Right now we are taking care of a foster dog which is a lot of fun. She is a great dane and her name is Maggie. I wanted to have a chance to have a pet but mike didnt want one so we agreed to have foster pets that we can take in for a little bit and not have to pay anything for food/vet/ adoption fees and then when we start to get sick of them we just find them a new home. Its been great having her around and she is such a good dog. And Maeli loves her to death!!

We are finally feeling like we are living in our house now. We have most boxes unpacked. Feels like it is taking forever to make this house our home. But i have things up on the walls now and i feel like we are settling in just fine. We love it here but have noticed how hard and expensive it is to be a home owner. We have had many things go wrong and we have had to fix ourselves!! Its a harsh reality but we are grateful that we are blessed with such a wonderful house and friends here.

Mike is doing great at his job. I went to visit some of his patient there and they all said great things about mike. He even calls some of them his grandparents so it makes me happy that they love him so much. Mike got season tickets to Boise State games this year so he is super excited about that. He saved up and dreamed about it for a long time and its nice to have a job that he can make a little extra when he wants to pay for things like that. He deserves to have something fun like that too!

I am just loving being at home. Maeli and I get to play lots and go wander around town. I have also been making cakes here and there for people and that is a lot of fun. It gives me something to do when i want a break from house chores which seem to never end. I mean seriously... I have never had to clean a house this size and it hardly is ever clean because of that. It is a lot of work that i have a hard time keeping up with :) LOL!

So things are going good and we are adjusting to a new life here! We miss a lot of our friends from Pocatello and wish that we could still be close to them but we are starting to make friends here and we love being so close to both our families.

Im so proud!

Mike took his PTA licensing test a week ago and I was so proud of him! He passed with flying colors and is now an official licensed Physical Therapists Assistant. He amazes me with how smart he is! He graduated top of his class and has only one more class to finish his bachelors degree as well.

I could not be happier with the job that he found ( mostly because he loves it and loves working for that company)! He has so much joy and excitement going to work every day and i love to see him so happy! And it has good insurance so that is a plus too! So the good news is that we can keep our house... and our baby... and our car... and Mike gets to keep his happy wife :) LOL! I feel so blessed right now to have an income that can support our family. I am so glad that we are able to start paying back those school loans too!