Sunday, August 31, 2008

Family Moment Monday - September 1

The other day I had a friends child over while she ran some errands. He saw me working on my projects and kept telling me he needed to do a project. So I got out some crayons and paper for him. In an attempt to keep his paper from moving and keep him from coloring on my table, I ended up taping several sheets of paper to the table surface. This made me think of a fun activity you could do to make dinner time a little more fun one day this week. If you've ever eaten at Macaroni Grill you may have an idea of where I'm going with this. I think it might be very fun one night before setting your table to cover your table with paper and tape it down. Then along w/ the casserole and salad that you dish out on everyone's plate, add a couple crayons to it. Then as you talk over the meal, you can encourage everyone to draw some things that happened to them that day and you could give each person a turn to tell you about their picture, and thus about their day. It may be worthwhile to remind the children that we only draw our day on the table when it's covered in paper!

For more things to do to spend quality time with your family, go check out Family Moment Monday at Motherhood for Dummies.

Baby's back!

Hooray! Pumpkin and hubs both came back on the same day. Couldn't be a better start to the week for me. Off to spend time with them, I'll write more tomorrow.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

I miss my baby!

Pumpkin is having her first sleep over. I'm taking it better worse differently than I expected. Her Mi-Ma hasn't seen her for awhile so I decided to let her take her for two days while I got some much needed stuff done at home. (Dear hubs is out of town on business yet again) I met my mother-in-law halfway, transferred Pumpkin and all of her stuff and then cried half the way home. It's the first time I"ve been away from her overnight, ever. And while it was fun to go to a movie with a friend last night and I"m almost giddy at all the projects I'll be able to get done around my house today, I'll be overjoyed to go pick her up.

But I'm happy about the perspective it's giving me. With dear hubs being gone so much, I get a little overwhelmed by her sometimes and yet he is on the other end of that and gets very sad b/c he misses out on so much with Pumpkin. I try to let him talk to her on the phone (a little difficult since most the talking she does these days is still sign language) everyday and keep him posted with what she's doing. But last night when I called my mother-in-law and asked if I could talk to Pumpkin and she just sat on the other end of the phone and made occasional squeaks while she played, I realized how insufficient that is. It did absolutely nothing to make me miss her any less. So already this experience it turning out to make me ever more appreciative of the sacrifices dear hubs makes to provide for our family. Oh how blessed I am!

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Lucky me!

I have great friends, I really do. Sometimes I get to be reminded how great they are, like today. My friend Tracey called this morning and I was talking about how I didn't have time to finish a project that I needed to have done by Friday. So she says "Why don't I come over and watch Pumpkin for awhile while you get it done." So she did. And I ended up feeling like the Wicked Stepmother because she also swept and mopped my kitchen, entry, dining room, and bathroom floors while I worked on my project. I told her several times that watching Ava was plenty of help but she kept telling me how it was no big deal. I beg to differ. To me, it was a VERY BIG DEAL! They look great and have given me a huge jump start on my day. So thank you thank you Tracey. Now I'm off to clean toilets....so fun!

Friday, August 15, 2008

Hmmmm.....

While I was visiting my parents, I had my grandmother help me make a quilt. This is her pin cushion. Having grown up during the great depression she is a big follower of the saying "waste not, want not" and when she pulled out this, it made me smile. I'm not sure you can tell by the picture, but all of the pins in there came to her with another purpose. She didn't buy any of them. The small silver ones are all the kind that come on new men's button-up shirts. The ones with the big tops all came off of corsages she wore for a wedding/mother's day/etc. Having just purchased several new work shirts for hubs' recent world travel, I realized the thought never even ocurred to me to save those pins for another purpose. I tossed them in the garbage. Seems everytime I'm with her, I'm reminded how much I can learn from her.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Me Feel Special

Today is my anniversary. Dear sweet hubs and I have been married 3 years today. As previously mentioned hubs is in California for work and I just arrived last night. He picked me up from the airport. We got to the hotel. He took Pumpkin from me and told me he would take care of the bedtime routine. I set down the diaper bag and walked into this:


This was from the hotel. They knew it was our anniversary. The didn't know that we don't drink. But the truffles were yummy!
He told me that he knew I was probably exhausted from taking care of Pumpkin alone for the last few weeks so he wanted to put her to bed so I could relax and go to sleep.
Follow the yellow brick road rose petal trail
Ahhhhhhh he had them draw me a bath. Did I mention I love baths? And the bubble bath smelled soooooooooooo yummy. Did I mention I love baths?

Happy Anniversary to me! I love my husband!

Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Laundry Chronicles - Edition 2

So I am back from what turned out to be a fabulous time with my family at the lake (pictures and details to come). Now I am sitting here looking at this very large bag of dirty clothes in front of me that is asking to be washed. (If laundry is talking to me does that mean I need a nap? I think so.) As many of you know, while vacations are nice and fun they are often exhausting at the same time so the task that lays before me (the 5 loads of laundry) is feeling a bit daunting and overwhelming. And then I think to myself "Hmmmm, I don't really NEED any of those clothes (yes I do) and they are ALREADY stuffed nicely put into a garbage bag. Maybe I should set them out by the back door (where we put our trash) and just make sure see they get thrown away what happens." Did I mention they are already in a garbage bag? Lol.

Maybe I'm not overwhelmed after all.

Friday, August 1, 2008

A Hiatus

So I have been at my sisters house for a day and a half now. The travel with Pumpkin wasn't nearly as bad as i thought it was. I was nervous about having a layover but it ended up being fairly uneventful. And since she didn't go to bed until 11 the night before and had to get up at 4:30 am for the flight, she slept the whole second leg. Hurrah! Hurrah! We are off today to go to Bear Lake, UT to stay at a cabin there with my parents, most of my siblings and their children. Should be lots of fun as there will be an abundance of water sporting, board game playing, sun-basking and junk food eating. Not sure there's a better combination than that! I'll let you know in a week when I'm back. Have a great weekend!