msbyn

I have lost 6.5 pounds in the last nine days.

I have been sleeping really well every.single.night. Asleep before 1:30 and up by 9:30 with no need for naps. You guys KNOW this is a huge, HUGE thing for me if you know me at ALL.

My emotional stability is the best its been in a good long while (thanks in large part to the ability to SLEEP).

I'm feeling more motivated and positive about things. Feeling good about myself.

I'm a little unhappy about the fact that this came about by basically giving up sugar and grains. :(

I'm doing the Keto diet, which seems to work so well for me. Low carb has always been the way I feel best, and the keto diet adds an even higher percentage of fat, so it is even easier for me to do. I'm actually having a bit of a hard time getting all of my calories in because I find this food to be so freaking filling and the lack of carbs has taken away my cravings.

Not that I have a lot to say, yet, I just wanted to make a post and see how this space is any different. Now I suppose I need to go find my friends from Livejournal :)

Anyway, for those who are new... ummmm... I don't know how to sum myself up.

I'll make a list, those are my favorite, when I'm not verbally vomiting 1,000 words on a page because EMOTIONS.

1. I cuss like a sailor.
2. I'm a reluctant/spontaneous adventurer. (Just spent a year+ living on a sailboat with my husband and some of the kids, traveling through Florida and the Bahamas)
3. I've been married for almost 23 years. Most of those years have been awesome. We've recently come through some pretty hard fucking times, but we're solid. Sometimes I bitch about my husband because this is my venting place. Regardless, he's an incredible man and I can't imagine anyone better.
4. I have five kids (plus a son in law, two grandkids AND an extra 'kid of my heart' who might as well be one of my own as well. They all come second in my priority list after my husband, even though most of them are adults and don't live at home, we see each other often and I'd say we're pretty damn close.
5. I hate normalcy, but at the same time, I'm incredibly lazy and finances stress me THE FUCK out after growing up and then spending the first two+ decades of my adult life barely eeking by (or not, as the case may be) so I tend to vacillate a lot on whether to take adventures or not (or I had no choice, because we were broke as hell).
6. I am a creative soul. I need to do something creative OFTEN or I go crazy. I am a writer, actress, singer and bizarrely enough, I've now started a tradition of writing and recording rap songs for my kids birthdays. Because, why the fuck not?

What else do you want to know? Oh yeah, 7. I'm a fairly open book and don't mind sharing things, especially with other people who tend to share their own lives as well.

Witness: The (2nd) Rap Song (there are also random funny family videos and whatnot on there as well, if you're a true stalker)

Watch on YouTube

8. I am insanely proud of my kids, maybe not always when they're being assholes (which I can fully admit they do) but I support them and their endeavors. This is my youngest daughter's YouTube channel. She taught herself the guitar and ukulele and has finally started sharing some of her original music!

Watch on YouTube

We have our own "Oh Sail Yes" blog/website now if you want to keep up with that.

Blog
Facebook
Youtube

Yesterday Patrick bought a couple of ukuleles and a small hand drum... thing at the Guitar Center Labor Day sale. I learned a song on the uke already (as did Abyni). It is SO much easier than a guitar!

Paris and Jazz are house/dog sitting for his bio-dad and step mom this weekend, and they have access to a ukulele and accordion. They're learning a song as well!

I'm so excited to see what we all come up with musically when there are less distractions in our lives, although WOW do I appreciate youtube tutorials whilst we still have access to that!

The three youngest. Paris did Jaedin and Abyni's makeup, and then decided that she wanted to go to the "Monster Bash" party at the last minute, so she threw on a scar or two and some blood and off they went:

I need to go paint replacements for all of the artwork I've misplaced somewhere (*sigh* Nothing I LOVE more than redoing artwork that I've already done). Or make gumpaste flowers for Sprite's cake. Instead I'm watching Paris' Elizabeth Taylor/Cleopatra video. She's got some mad skillz, yo. I'm so proud of her.

Oh, and I need to help Abyni make another video when she's not coughing and hacking. She's pretty freaking comfortable in front of the camera, too.

I'm feeling exceptionally scattered and A.D.D. today. Exceptionally. And that is saying a lot.

( I did a blooper reel for BMB today and the photos of the outtakes are hilarious:) )

And Paris did some AMAZING makeup FX today and freaked me OUT!

( Close-up Zombie Makeup )
Quite a difference from the princess look she did earlier this month!:)

Patrick made a tire swing for the kids today. There is an area of the yard where they tend to hang out. There is the above hammock, a hammock with a stand and now a tire swing.

The weather is SO gorgeous that we have had the windows all open for days. Patrick and I went and sat in the hammock together this afternoon for a while... it was blissful.

This morning the dogs fell asleep like this:

Today has been a lazy day. Patrick had the day off and we stayed in bed until 11:30. Having the kids doing Epic school online is awesome, btw.

Then I finished a book by Karin Slaughter that I just couldn't put down. I like her books, her style of writing and I love the suspense and the "real" characters that I can relate to. I've never read characters that seem as real and as deep... in a way that I can relate to. I've read "deep" characters, but they were always the type that I had no frame of reference for, which is good, but this kind of makes me feel less... less, 'odd'.

Anyway, we're probably going to the cheap theater tonight to see Total Recall with the boys as the girls are at a sleepover.

Tomorrow we visit the children's hospital with Bean again.

Some of my favorite photos from today!

(Looking at the photos, I REALLY need to do some 'cosmetic surgery' on Bean ASAP. I need to redo his eyes, lashes, and resew his arms so that the wires go in at the elbow... AND make them longer. Still, I'm proud of my very first attempt at making a puppet!)

I just wanted to eat this little guy up. SO adorable! My LJ & RL friend jorjedatoy brought her little 2 youngest kids.

And this little guy, too... he gave Bean a kiss on the cheek. I did my best not to completely melt!

It went well, I think the kids all had fun. There were a couple of older kids (again) that became obsessed with putting things in Bean's mouth, I don't know what it is about boys... anyway, it was good. It only lasted a little over an hour, but then I had a little time to just sit and chill with Jorje for a bit while Abyni played with Sasha and her little stuffed monkey that she got. It was nice.

I DEFINITELY learned some things to do for future events, so I'm very grateful that we had some kids to practice on. Oh, and both of our neighbors from either side of us came with their younger kids, too!

Patrick and I ran to Aldi for groceries and got nearly everything we need for the next two weeks (hopefully). Patrick and Kainan are appreciating having breakfast burritos, breakfast bagels or sandwiches premade and ready to heat up in the mornings, so I'm going to make more of those not only for them, but for us 'stay at home' people, too, because I need an easy breakfast or I won't eat it.

Now I'm ready to eat something and chill.

I'm very nervous and slightly confused about what is going to happen tomorrow, but I hope that Paris and Bean can bring some smiles to the kids and distract them from reality for a little bit. Paris and Bean interact so well together and improv really well... so it should be good.

I'm going to have Jaedin take photos with Bean and the kids (if they want to) and give them a card so that they can email me and I can send them a photo (or I'll just write down names & emails in order and hope that I remember when it comes time to email them!)

I want this to go well. I've never had a sick kid before (other than maybe a once a year cold/flu type thing, but rarely have any of my kids been sick for more than two or three days at a time), so I can not imagine the stress of having to have a child in the hospital. I want to bring them some smiles and laughs... and I also want to start some fundraising so that we can order a custom stuffed plush of Bean to hand out to the kids some day.

Anyway, that is what is on my mind tonight.

Bean's Monkey Business has a big fan in Xander (he even made a video for us where he sings Bean's *B* song... STOLE MY HEART!!!) Since he made one for us, the girls just love him. When I told them it was Xander's birthday today (thanks to facebook:), we decided to make a shout out Happy birthday video for him today. It took forever as I had to keep working through glitches (its been a LONG time since I made a video, apparently!:) The lighting is awful, but it got made anyway, and I don't think a 5 year old is going to care about the lighting!!

I also got an email asking if we do live shows, and if we could get booked for a birthday party in November. I need to get some paperwork/contract type stuff worked out. I want to have a live show/birthday party for Bean anyway, once it cools off a little bit, and the newspaper has been asking to come to a live show, so it might all start gearing up here again soon.

If you haven't seen it, this is my other daughter Paris with Bean (this is still my favorite Bean video of all time:)

I just happened to look at Bean's Monkey Business youtube channel last night. I have 10,000 views. Well, last night it was CLOSE, but today its actually OVER 10K. My silly little stop motion animation of the Old MacDonald Had a Farm has over 5,000 views. 4,337 of those views are from the last 30 days!

I discovered that around June 17th, my daily view count went from 40-50 to over 300 almost every day, consistently. And I haven't even uploaded new content for TWO MONTHS!

I went and monetized a few of the more popular videos with all original content because Paris monetized hers and made $25.00 fairly quickly.

I CAN NOT WAIT TO MOVE AND GET FILMING AGAIN!!! I am getting really excited about having a real puppet set so that Bean can "walk" and move from room to room. I have some super exciting ideas about making sleeves with "Bean's" hands/gloves on the end, so that for B roll footage, Abyni can put her hands in the sleeves and it will allow us to have Bean do more things with his hands. Count on his fingers, play with playdough, paint, hold someone's hand on a field trip, etc.

I would so love for this to be something that becomes income for us at some point.

I am also really looking forward to doing more live shows.

Anyway, just a weird, random thing that I suddenly decided to look at.

Blog Posting about Kainan and his birthday

I will also be posting VERY soon with some of the art projects I'm working on for the new house. Patrick bought me some canvases, stretchers, paint and whatnot today and I am SO excited to get started on those!!! Yay for Pinterest ideas!

20 Things I want to Do By Our 20th Anniversary

Battle Scars (inspired by

aftondayslj post... and I'm amazed at how many things I kept remembering after I commented on her post! I wonder how many things I'll think of throughout the day!:)

The loan approval process has made it to the appraisal process. I have no fears about that. I'm still ASTOUNDED that we found a 1,600 sq ft house within walking distance of the Sr. High on a half an acre of land for under $110k. I'm not at all worried that it will appraise too low.

It looks like this is really happening... I am trying to NOT get too excited and keep myself on an even keel, but I have a feeling that I am going to sleep through the month of August from just the sheer exhaustion of all the adrenaline spikes from these three months!

I was really struggling to come up with a color scheme until I realized that I am finally decorating a BIG open well lit space, so for once I don't have to plan around making rooms look bigger! I'm going with more jewel tones this time and I am SO FREAKING EXCITED!!!

We have decided on our color schemes and have fabulous plans for decorating. I can barely wait to get started:) As a matter of fact, once the girls leave for Iowa, I am going to have Patrick help me build some big canvases, go buy the paint that I want for the living room, den and kitchen, and I am going to do some paintings for the entry and hallway that tie those four - five colors together!

I'm going to start gathering my definite colors to this board here if you're curious: http://pinterest.com/bynalways/our-new-house/

I just made a post about the difference in quality between our old camera and our new one... and even I am shocked! I mean, seriously, wow. HUGE difference. Videos that I thought looked okay before now just look awful to me. Thankfully, I doubt kids care that much:)

This is so strange to me, but my most popular post thus far is our Old MacDonald Had a Farm post. That is about the only thing that gets searched that leads to our blog. Who would have thought?

And the Top 5 Videos post I made to compile some of the most popular videos in one place.

Oh, and I have contacted a few fundraising events in October that I'm hoping will let us come and set up with Bean and do some live shows!

Seriously. Paris and "Bean" didn't know the camera was ready yet, so we were just playing around... it was SO funny and Paris is just so adorably giggly and cute:) Bean is trying to convince Paris that he has 16 toes.

Paris' makeup tutorial youtube channel is doing SO great!!! LESS than ONE MONTH ago, I posted about how she had just over 2,000 views and 56 subscribers.

In less than one (ONE!!) month

she's gotten 2,000 MORE views and has gained 130 new subscribers!

Look at that: 186 Subscribers and 4,049 Views!

I am so freaking proud of her. Oh, and we got our new camera on Saturday and she spent the next four hours studying the user manual so that she can improve the quality of her videos.

I forgot to borrow Kainan's good phone this morning, so all I had was my old little cell phone, so the photos are really bad, but its all I have. For the first hour, I was behind the desk and kids were climbing up the front and these 4 kids would NOT move out of the way for the smaller kids, so I went around to the front and sat down with the kids. For quite a while I was SURROUNDED by a lot of kids, it was crazy. By the time I remembered to take photos, it was near the end of the event, but there were still some die-hard fans around:)

It was sweet how all but one kid completely ignored the fact that I was even there. They just talked with Bean, played peek a boo and asked a million questions. Oh, and at the park the other day AND today, the kids were so obsessed with trying to feed Bean... that got aggravating, but most kid stopped when I asked them to.

One brother & sister started crying when they had to leave and I felt bad:(