Directions:

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (95 degrees C). Place popcorn in a very large bowl.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil without stirring 4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in soda and vanilla. Pour in a thin stream over popcorn, stirring to coat.

Place in two large shallow baking dishes and bake in preheated oven, stirring every 15 minutes, for 1 hour. Remove from oven and let cool completely before breaking into pieces.

I am the worst blogger ever.  I went on a girls’ trip to Las Vegas 3 months ago and I am just posting it now.  It’s funny because I went to my first blogger’s conference back in February called BYBC(because I got sponsored a free ticket, the same reason why I’m going to another blog conference this weekend!) which was a two days conference in SLC and I ended up napping in the car most of the classes.  Oops!  The whole time I was thinking, “Man, I really don’t take blogging very seriously, do I?  These people are on the ball!” So I am sorry guys, I am not like the other bloggers who take blogging so seriously and spend 30-40 hours a week on it(average amount of hours people spend on their blogs from what I’ve collected!).  I think I spend about 5 hours a week on it if that.  But I love my readers and I hope you know that I do enjoy blogging and love it!  And everything that I do write about I take very seriously and it’s written with honesty and from my heart.

Anyway, so these are the pictures from the trip.  I didn’t really know these girls before the trip(who does that? haha) but Mckenzie got all of us together and made it happen!  We were talking one day at some event we went to and casually talking about how Vegas is so much fun and it’s such a fun place to go on a girls’ trip and how we should go.  Well, I didn’t think anything was going to happen out of it, but here we were going on a 3 night, 4 day vacation!  I almost didn’t go because I thought it would be like a 2 night, 3 day trip max, but my husband actually was encouraging me to go.  He is so sweet and I had so much fun, I am so glad I went.

when your amazing photographer friend Mckenzie Deakins tells you to lie down and look up at the sky then immediately jumps in the water with a camera…. you do what she says. 

It was so much fun!  At the end of the trip Mckenzie made a confession to me that the reason why she invited me was because she has the biggest Asian women crush on me.  I told her, “I knew it! I knew I was invited because I’m Asian!” Thanks for including me in this group, and I love you girls!

Being a mom is not a glamorous job.  It is not fun 100% of the time, I am covered in snot or food, it consists of many moments of impatience, frustrations, annoyance, and exhaustion.

Tonight I went on a mother-daughter date with my middle child.  When we came home, the rest of the kids were asleep so I got her ready for bed, just the two of us.  As we prayed and I kissed her good night, she asked me if I could come lie with her and cuddle with her.  I said of course and as I tucked her in and cuddled her, she squeezed my hand super tight and kissed me several times on the lips and she said to me, “Momma? If there was a fire, I would rather lose my blankie than to lose you.”  It made my heart melt because if you know her, her blankie is everything to her.  She can’t sleep without it, she cries if she can’t find it, it comforts her and she carries it with her everywhere in the house. I almost cried and kissed her about 20 times and whispered, “Thank you baby, I love you so much too.”  

It’s sweet moments like this that make my heart swell up with so much happiness and I know being their mother is my most important job. And even though it is the hardest job I’ve ever had, no other job has ever made me more happy or at peace.

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Mott’s via Mode Media.  As always, I only work with companies I would really use myself and all opinions are 100% my own.  Thank you for your support!

Until I had children.  

I imagined being a stay at home mom and loving every moment of it and dedicating every single second of my life to my future husband and my kids.  Never needing time for myself, I would be the most selfless, caring, sweet, dedicated mom who always had everything under control.  

Oh, but after I popped out those babies, how things change.  I kept it pretty well under control up to 2 children.  I was able to have a clean house and a hot home cooked meal ready when my husband opened that door.  I had time for myself and time to pursue my hobbies.  There are many things I do now as a mother to 3 kids that if you were to tell me then, I would have cringed and said “Me?  No way!  Never, ever would I do such a thing!”  So here are 5 things I said I would never do as a mom but now it happens on a regular basis as a shortcut to pretending to keeping it all together.

1. I said I would never let myself go and I would take a shower everyday. That I’d look super cute in my little apron vacuuming and dancing all adorably when my husband came home from work.  I don’t think I’ve completely let myself go but I have let myself go in some ways.  Sure I dress up and put makeup on when I go out to see friends or gatherings, but when I know I don’t have anywhere to go where people will see me which is most days, I hang out in my pajamas that I’ve slept in the night before, I don’t even wash my face in the morning or look at myself in the mirror in the day, and Jay will come home to find me looking and dressed exactly the same as when he left to go to work that morning.  I don’t even bother to put on my contact lenses, I just wear glasses all day.  And showers?  Ha!  Gone are the days when I used to shower every single morning and do my hair.  Dry shampoo is my best friend.  I have a friend who’s tried a ton of different kinds of dry shampoos and she told me the Suave dry shampoo is the best, so that’s the one I use.  And it’s under $3!

2. I said I would never feed my family frozen ready-made foods for dinner, ever.  I am pretty good at cooking healthy foods from scratch almost every night.  And I’ve never made the boxed macaroni & cheese for dinner or for lunch ever in my 7 1/2 years of motherhood.  BUT I have served frozen ready-made foods such as pizza and lasagna on a few occasions.  It didn’t happen until I had 3 kids though, so give me some credit, would ya?  But I always serve it with fresh vegetables! 

3. I said my husband would always come home to a clean house and a hot meal waiting for him on the dinner table.  Like I said previously, up to 2 kids, my husband came home to a clean house and a hot home cooked meal.  Now?  I am frantically cleaning the house to try to make it look decent 15 mins. before I know my husband will walk into that door, and most of the time I start making dinner after he gets home so I can cook while he watches the kids.  It’s the craziest thing, I would clean up the kids’ messes numerous times throughout the day and I feel like all I’ve been doing is cooking, feeding and cleaning after them but when Jay’s about to come home and I look around the house, it’s still a mess!  How does that happen?  Because after cleaning up their messes they make, I am still back to square one, before all the extra mess they made!

4. I said I would always make time for me and my husband and go on hot dates every week.  HAHAHA.  I think the last date we’ve been to was for my birthday back in January?  I think we go on maybe 3 dates a year.  Isn’t that so sad?  We really need to be better at that but it’s hard when you don’t have a set babysitter.  And if you’re super paranoid and don’t trust anyone except family.

5. I said I would always speak to my kids calmly and in a gentle voice.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  A few weeks ago I yelled at my daughter and all day long she told EVERYBODY she saw, “My mommy yelled at me today.”  Seriously, out of nowhere.  Her sister even said it on a home video I was recording of our baby boy, and boy did I turn that thing off fast!  To save face I told the people my girls just ratted off to, “Hahaha, she’s so funny… hey, that’s a good sign right?  If I yelled at her every day and it was the norm, she wouldn’t be thrown off by it and tell everybody…. right?  Hahahaha…..”

One shortcut that I do take that makes me feel good instead of guilty is feeding my kids Mott’s® Snack & Go.  I am all about checking the ingredients list in the back of the foods that I purchase for my family and their ingredients for their Strawberry Applesauce Pouch are(I literally just copied and pasted their ingredients list): APPLES, STRAWBERRY PUREE CONCENTRATE, WATER, FRUIT AND VEGETABLE JUICES (FOR COLOR), ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), NATURAL FLAVORS. That’s it!  Pass!  I love that the strawberry and natural flavors have no added sugar and they’re all high in Vitamin C.  They’re a nutritious applesauce my kids love in a squeezable pouch they can take with them wherever they go such as in the car, picnics, to church, lunch boxes, even to their gymnastics class!  Mott’s is also the only applesauce brand with Box Tops for Education®, helping to support kids’ schools.  My kids’ teachers love getting Box Tops, and I am sure every teacher loves getting them.  You can visit motts.com to learn more.

And this video is pretty funny, I think any mom would get a laugh out of it and relate to it in one way or another!

So what are your shortcuts or things you said you never would do as a parent?  I would love to hear yours so that it makes me feel a little better about myself! 😉