another thought about next week...

i don't suppose that i will find this in the surf of marco island,

when I am there next week? one can only wish.....

kickin' it up a notch!

this morning i was upstairs getting ready for work and heard sydnie say that she was going to make breakfast for us. i heard her messing around downstairs and knew that she was in her element. as i walked into the kitchen she had on oven mitts so that she could take the eggo's out of the toaster oven without burning herself and on the kitchen counter i saw her latest creation. adorable little chocolate milk cups with a banana slice stuck on the side. you see she decided to mix chocolate syrup with strawberry syrup to create a whole new flavor, but felt like the cups needed a little kick....so she added the banana slice onto the edge! how adorable is that!

next week?

i am wondering if we are going to have to wear a mask next week when we travel to florida? i am sure that this whole swine flu thing will blow over by then, but still if it doesn't that would be an interesting trip. we are taking a red eye out on tuesday night and i am not sure that i want to sleep on a plane with a mask on! i just cannot imagine that it would be very comfortable.

speaking of our upcoming trip. i went tanning this morning. i have not been tanning in about 20 years! it is amazing how it all comes right back. the smell of the tanning beds. the lights. the relaxing feeling. the burn!!! yes that is right.....i burned. i was only in there for 10 minutes, but my body feels like it sat in the sun for 4 hours! but it is worth it now, so that i won't burn next week when i am sitting on the white sand beaches with crystal clear water and an umbrella drink in my hand.

love it~

girls weekend

this morning i am out the door. heading up to pdx for a much needed girls weekend. julanne and i are going to head out early, of course hit starbucks on the way........then hit the square. cannot wait to spend time with my friend, trying on some new clothes, eating some cheesecake factory and then taking in a showing of GREASE!!! (i have a feeling that i will have to rebuy that soundtrack on itunes....my verion is on tape. lol. ) then we get to lavish in luxury at a hotel overnight, sleep in, get more starbucks and then if we choose another shopping extravaganza!

take your child to work

so today was take your child to work day and sydnie finally got to go to work with daddy! she has begged him for about two years to go and this year he finally agreed. being the procrastinators that he is, thad forgot to add syd's name to the work list and luckily on wednesday when he emailed them, they said that they had one spot left!

here is the part of the story that i like: syd was up at 6:30!!! dressed by 6:40!!! teeth and hair and various packing done by 6:50!!!!

this has never happened in the history of sydnie....her nickname is molasses! i think she was really excited. she had a really great time with her dad. they visited a metals/plastics cutting facility and she brought home some cutout figures (a dolpin, a rose and a horse)

noah came to work with me for fifteen minutes of my morning in second grade, then he wanted to go to class. in the afternoon i grabbed him and he came down to fifth grade with me, but there was not much for him to do, so he went back to class. overall he was happy because he got to do a couple of things with his mom!

curse book fairs!!!

this is the week that our school hosts book fair from scholastic and it always brings out the nutso, gotta buy books frenzy in my children. well, actually it is not even about the books, they really want the fun erasers, bookmarks and pencils. ugggghhhhh. because we don't already have enough of that stuff in our lives?

so monday morning i caught noah counting his money, he was going to take all of it! i told him that he could only take $6 for a book! what did he buy............a pointer to help him read with. syd bought a book. but here is where it gets interesting:

they each took money back in on wednesday, their library time, and each walked away with a bunch of pencils and erasers. noah bought a pokemon pencil for himself, his sister and some other kid from class that asked him too. lol. needless to say there went $9.00 down the drain. i am thankful that he did that for his siter, but this kid that he never talks about? where does that come from. when i asked him about this kid who he has only mentioned once this year he proceeded to tell me that he was his "secret" best friend (no one even knows)!! so then we i started talking to him about saving his money and i was kind of upset that he snuck money out the door this was his response:

"but mom, i just want to be like jesus! i want to help people and show them love, by buying them stuff!"

i think his love language is gifts right now!!!

can't wait

my little guy cannot wait until his cousin his old enough to play with. noah is such a loving, generous kid and he is anxious to be able to run and play with luke. i secretly think that he wishes that luke was old enough to play with lightsabers so that they could duel each other. or maybe he is just waiting for uncle randal to put on a darth vader mask and look at his son luke and say.................."luke, i am your father!!!"

Happy Birthday MOM!!!

the thing that makes her most happy.......her grandkids!

take my breath away

they continually take my breath away. i am so blessed that they are in my life.

Silly String Wars

Grandpa started it all! He decided that we should use the silly string from the easter baskets after the kids were done hunting their eggs. The games began. Man grandpa can run!!!! Noah finally sprayed grandpa a couple of times, then it was time for ryen to get in on the action. She liked spraying people, but not when people sprayed her so her daddy took over and let's just say that there was a lot of string in hair!!! Syd finally got hers out to spray her dad and brother and by the time we were all done, the yard was a mess and the string was all gone. I warned dad that the string would not "melt" in the rain, but he said he was sure it would. needless to say we got a phone call today asking for the kids to come down and clean up their string.

(he was kidding of course)

Easter 2009

Easter this year kind of went by in a blur. our family was sooooo tired. lots of running prior to that sunday and we were all running on fumes. the kids had a blast decorating their eggs, making special chickie pops and sydnie made these adorable easter egg puzzles. we went to church that morning and enjoyed some great worship and an great message. then we headed south to my parents house. enjoyed some family time. so nice to be with family. hope you all had wonderful easter's and that we all remembered the reason for the day!

"Everything"

This skit is performed by my brother's youth group at Northwest Hills in Corvallis. The kids did a great job! I have posted this skit before and it moves me to tears everytime. They performed it this Easter morning and we were all anxiously awaiting for the person to post it to youtube so that we could watch it. it truly is a great reminder that He has taken on our sins, He bears all, He loves us and would do anything (even die) for us. Before we go into a sugar induced haze today....let us truly remember what this day is about. Not a little bunny foo foo. Not candy. Not brightly colored eggs. But about our Lord and Savior who was born, died, buried and rose again on the third day!

chickie pops

here are the results of our girl time, baking! it was super fun, but so much work. i am not sure how many more times i will make these, but it was fun this one time.

a flock of birds

this was one of the best ones.


the easter egg attempt

help........i'm melting

this one just got squished.

i thought i would share our attempts at making cake pops............bakerella.com. they were by no means perfect. i think we decided that putting the candy coating in the microwave was the best way to ensure a smoother coat. but they were still hard to get all the excess coating off. syd has these visions that they will be perfect, so it was a good lesson that life is not perfect and we are not perfect, but God love us anyway. We had a blast working on them together and she was super pumped to take them all down to my parents house for Easter. I think we will have enough left over to share with teachers on monday.

in two years...........

i just want to put it out there right now..........i don't know how we EVER going to be ready in time for middle school!!! it starts so stinking early in the morning (7:45am) and my daughter is not a morning person. i know i still have 2 more years, but right here, right now i want to say it is going to be a hard adjustment!!!!

can you tell we have had one of those mornings? anyone else experience those? no one wants to get up, no one wants to get dressed? toys are more enticing than eating breakfast? can i just watch a minute of tv before school? but somehow i still managed to sneak downstairs and blog this post? hum? maybe i should be upstairs cracking the whip right now....he he. hey, a mom has got to have a sense of humor in times like this.

but seriously, only two more years!!!

soft and squishy!

the other day i received several excellents hugs from a bunch of kiddos, which is not unusual, but during this hug one of the little girls exclaims:

"you are so soft, not hard like my mom!"

hum?

i did not have the heart to tell her that it meant i was fat.........but what an awesome way to look at it. so now when i look in the mirror, i can tell myself that i am squishy! that it is all right, cuz it makes my hugs that much better.

In One Month

i just realized this morning that in one month i will be sitting on a white sand beach, hopefully with an umbrella drink in my hand and relaxing. that is right, i said in a bathing suit! oh wait, maybe i did not say that.

my amazing husband won a trip to marco island, florida for the two of us. all expenses paid! this is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity for the two of us. we are going to take the red eye in on tuesday night and then we have all day wednesday until saturday at the resort. all inclusive. they even have a restauraunt on the beach. we can sit and eat our meal with our toes in the water.

then to top it all of we decided to drive to disneyworld and experience that for a couple of days! this is the part i feel a little guilty about, but we need time alone. we are telling ourselves that it is a discovery trip..."do we really want to bring the kids here?" but really it is just a fun time for us to be together and remember what it is like to just be the two of us.

i am thankful that i was able to get some time off of work and go on this incredible trip with my man. guess i better start working out regularly again and watch what is going in my mouth, because i will have to fit into a swimsuit! yikes. every woman's nightmare.

finding "our" thing

this weekend in an effort to connect with my beloved daughter, i decided to go into her world and try out something. syd is a hard one to connect with. she likes her alone time. after school most days she will do her homework, then head upstairs to work on her art projects or play club penguin.....but then i miss out on time to just be with her and enter her world. it usually ends up that either right at dinner time or at bedtime is when she wants to finally spend time with me. so i usually invite her to help make dinner, because she loves to cook. but she really loves to bake more.....last week she asked to bake a cake and i let her. then she decorated it all by herself and she was so proud when we ate some for dessert after dinner that night.

awhile ago i showed her http://www.bakerella.blogspot.com/ and she loves it. it is one of the sites she visits everyday. so last week she got all excited that bakerella had gone to visit Pioneer Woman and she saw their creations together. at thad's bday we made the oreo footballs for him and syd loved it. she has been begging me to make the cake pops and when she showed me the adorable easter ones, i decided that this would be it, the thing we do together.

so she made up her supply list and we had a girls date today. we visited michaels and target in order to find the items we needed. she is so excited. she was ready to start sorting the daisies and the rainbow chips, but i told her to wait until thursday so that we have our supplies all ready to go come friday night.

i guess that baking has always kind of been our thing. she loves to help bake pies and cookies. christmas is one of her favorite times because she loves to decide which goodies we are going to bake for the season.

i only hope that as we continue on our journey as mother and daughter, that this will keep the lines of communication open for us. that if we hit a rough patch, we can always pull out the flour, sugar and cookie cutters and let the sharing begin.

responsiblity

my little guy has decided that he wants a cat, his very own cat, to keep and love and take care of. so in an effort to show that he is ready for one this week he has decided that he is dishwasher boy. he takes everyone's plates from the table, turns on the water and rinses each plate thoroughly (a little too much actually) and then places them in the dishwasher! wow! he is so proud of himself.

it all started a while ago when both of the kids asked for another cat and their dad refused immediately. we already have one cat and a dog and that is about enough for my man to handle. but last sunday he went to a friends house to play and the boys had each gotten a new hamster.....that did it, he was hooked back on the i want my own pet. so we came up with a plan to ask his dad. of course their will be no rodents in this house. ever. so it has to be another cat.

you start by asking for a hamster. then you move to a ferret(eeeewwww) then you end with a kitty cat. simple right? so began noah's quest. his purpose in life. to show his dad that he is responsible enough to take care of a cat. who could deny their child that request.

apparently his dad would.

on getting old

you always hear the tales....the sagging, the metabolism, the internal body thermometer and when you are young you chalk them up to your crazy mom and her friends. well i am about there people and i am hear to say that i want my old body back.

the other day i woke up and i thought to myself as i looked in the mirror, "where did my eyebrows go?" isn't this suppose to be something that happens when you are about 50? i am only 29 (again)!!! i don't want the painted on eyebrow look. i refuse to do it, but sadly i am doomed because my mom does not have any eyebrows left. literally. she is 63 and no eyebrows. i remember distinctly the day i looked at her and asked her where her eyebrows went. so sadly i am at the point, when i remember, where i enhance my eyebrows with a little powder so that you can actually see them. i don't think it is so much that i have lost hair it is that they are slowly fading into oblivion.

a couple of months ago i got these super cute post earrings and i wear them all the time, but suddenly they don't hang the way they used to. i notice that when i wear them, they flop down a little. could this be the dreaded "my earlobes hang down farther than my nose" phenomenom that older women talk about? when i was young i remember older women telling me not to wear big earrings that pulled my lobes down even further, because the day would come when they would sag anyway....so i was careful what amount of weight i put into those holes in my ears. it did not matter. so now i am forced to wear drop earrings so that you will not look at my post earrings and see the sag, the granny ears that i am doomed to have.

by the hair on my chiny-chiny chin..........okay i am not there yet!!! but seriously what is up with having to shave your chin and mustache? my MIL keeps a razor in the car and just swipes at hair on her chin whenever she notices it!!! eeeewwwwwwwwwwwww.

we all know that we are going to sag, that is inevitable unless we get some "enhancements". i am fine with that, as long as i have some muscle tone underneath it all. i don't want to be a grandma that never wears shorts or short sleeves because of the sag.

so next time you see me, please don't stare at my waning eyebrows or my sagging lobes. just politely say hi and then continue to stare in their general direction until i relent and let you take a look at my aging body hair and grandma lobes!

World Autism Day

this year i have had the opportunity to meet some amazing kids and be in their world for a short time. these kids are special and just want to be loved. i love spending time with them and watching how their minds work and create. it is interesting to me that they thrive in their world, but struggle in ours. if we all just took a moment to enter their world....to see life through their eyes how amazing would that be.

today is world autism day. support it. know it. stretch yourselves to see through their eyes.

http://www.worldautismawarenessday.org/site/c.egLMI2ODKpF/b.3917065/k.BE58/Home.htm


another exciting project if you have not heard about it is the miracle project. a mom of an autistic child started a theatre company and a documentary was made about it. "autism: the musical" great movie. shows you how amazing and talented most of these little kiddos are.

http://www.themiracleproject.org/

and finally this is dedicated to my little friend who i love dearly, who has stolen my heart......

let me enter your world for one day, sing songs, draw pictures and just be. cannot wait to see you today and celebrate your world!