Crust of the bread

Livy should be taking a nap, but she wouldn't go down. I should be packing for gualala, but i'm not. Brooke and Livy are playing in the backyard with Cole, Emma and Tyler-Boys vs. Girls something or other. Its afternoons like these that make me appreciate so much the neighborhood we live in. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but just that kids play outside together and then other kids join them. And you have a neighborhood "gang" of kids. Its great! And Jackson just started crying.
And it is a week later and now I am tyring to remember the "deep" thoughts I was going to write about the crust of bread...
I do remember Brooke told me, "Mom, I even ate the crust, and I like it." when I asked her what she had for lunch. But I can't remember what other intriguing thing I was correlating it to.

Typical of my life!

Big Events

The month of May has been highlited with some big events...well, not all of them are necessarily "big", but rather fun!
Ben went to china for the first week: Maybe not classified as "big", but the events that took place while he was gone were big. Brooke got the flu the first night he was gone, thankfully it didn't spread through all of us. We went to the Aquarium-always a very fun event! We participated in Mormon Helping Hands- a statewide day of volunteering in California, and by the way, the parks look awesome, and it was a lot of fun! But the biggest event while he was gone is that I bought a MINIVAN! I would have never imagined in all my life how excited, elated, and giddy I would be to drive a 6 year old used minivan. But man alive, after driving my Mazda with 3 kids for the last 8 months. A minivan is the way to go. And what is even better, is that it was under our budget of what we had set and now we can put in the new cement in our backyard!! Woohoo! Thankfully my dad was around and he helped me check it all out on carfax and he came and talked to the guy with me and test drove it!! I love it. It is an 04 Dodge Grand Caravan! I love the space, love that I can take other kids for people, love that I can have a double stroller in the back and still go grocery shopping or have my bag of volleyballs. Love it! Love it! It was a Big Event!
We went to Disneyland the second week of May. Ben found $9.00 ticket from Oakland to Long Beach! So we flew down early tuesday morning, and came home wednesday evening! We all have season passes and it was so much fun! Brooke is at a perfect age. She is still totally into the magical part of it and loves the characters and the kid rides. And she also LOVES the big rides. Her favorite lately is space mountain, tower of terror and screamin'! Livy is fun too, but for different reasons. She is very apprehensive about the characters, does not like big rides at all, and is scared of any dark ride.(Which is kind of fun if you are holding her, becasue she just snuggles right into your chest and burrys her eyes. But for some reason she still likes to go on those rides.) I think my most fun thing this time was hanging out with Calvin and Livy and Jackson on Winnie the Pooh while everyone went on Splash Mountain. They loved it. We went again, and again and again. And it was just enjoyable to watch them skip together and hold hands running up the line and getting so excited! I really tried to capture some of those little moments this time and take in the joy in the simple! It was a fun trip with lots of fun and lots of fun stories. Krystal and I flew home by ourselves with all the kids, that was an adventure. really funny story, calvin "credit card" a guy with his new sword while waiting in line for Splash mountain. Krystal said- the guy wouldn't even turn his back again after that. He said-kind joking,"Of all the places you could have hit me with that sword. In my leg, in my back, in the arm...but you had to hit me there". On the flight home Livy fell head first over the chair into the aisle on the airplane-luckily krystal caught her by the neck. Oh it was fun!
Another big event is that Jackson's tear duct has cleared up-at least for the last four days!! This is a HUGE event. I am going in next week to get all the information to have a surgery done. It is so clogged. And after many trials of antibiotics, creams, drops, homeopathic things, lavender, constantly rubbing it, etc. it has cleared up for now. The last thing I tried-recommendation from my sister- is cutting onions and having him really close. We'll see if it lasts!
Decorating the kids bedrooms. For those of you that know the true me, this is a big event. I have come to accept the fact that I am not good at decorating. I love to do it, or I should say I love to think about decorating, and what I want or think would look good, and I like looking for decorations- but the acutal part of putting things on the walls, rearranging, etc. I just don't seem to get around to it. And if it weren't for some great friends, Melanie and Brittany, my walls would still be totally bare. So, I have only lived in my house for a year and a half and it is actually starting to come together. And Ben cleaned out and rearranged the laundry room. And that along with the decoration were very big events.
We had two Bridal Showers-Carly's (my soon to be sister-in-law) and my best friend from high school.
Brooke had her first open house-I absolutely love her pre-school. They do some much imagination/creativity projects. Tons of singing and learning through play. Next year academics will be stressed so much (already in kindergarten) that i am really trying to promote and enjoy more creativity and art at home as well.
I resigned as the Head Volleyball Coach at Washington High school. Now that is a huge Event. (It actually happened the end of April, but we will include it in may.) It was a hard, sad and good thing. One i have been contemplating and thinking about for a long time. It was hard becasue I love it, and I really love some of the girls I was coaching, and this next season I had the most potential and natural talent that I had ever had. But it was good becasue it is the right thing for our family. Good because I am not stressing about the season already...it closed a chapter in my life, and that is always a little bit hard, even if it is the right thing.
The Lombards came to dinner. Lori, Jeannine (their two daughters) and I were teammates at FAU and Lori and I lived together for three years. We always had dinner at their house, about 2o minutes away from school. I went there a few times when we were evacuated from our apartments for hurricanes. It was so fun to see them. It mad me miss Lori, stacey and celena even more.
Some big events still to come this month: Gualala!!! And Ben's 30th Birthday!!
It's been a good month-it has just gone by too fast.

TV

We don't have TV. Not because I think everything evil comes out of that Black Buddah (as Sam once coined the phrase), but we decided to not get TV when we bought our house because we can't afford a cable bill. And after we lived with my parents and had dvr and all the great channels, I didn't want to go back to basic. I didn't want to have to watch commercials. I used to miss it. I used think about when we could possibly squeeze it into our budget. But now I love not having it. We watch things on hulu occasionally when Ben finishes his seminary lesson early and ben is an avid ESPN. com visitor, but for the most part I don't miss it at all. And after this week I have been thinking that we might never get TV again. And that sounds really weird to me becuase I thought my sister-in-law was crazy when they said they weren't going to have tv when they moved. But the tables have turned and now I am the "crazy" one it seems.

When we flew down to disneyland on tuesday (more on that later) we went on jet blue. And by the way I am a total jet blue fan now. SOOO much leg room. Anyway, they have a tv for every seat and you get to control the channels, which is great! Especially since they had the disney channel and the discovery channel. Brooke loved it. (And I miss tv for things like animal planet and the history channel). And we loved it becasue it kept the kids entertained (except on the ride back on wednesday because the tv's were broken, ahhh, we missed them). But right next to the kids channels were MTV, VH1 and cartoon network (which had nothing but some stupid cartoons with not very good language on it). And I worried that brooke would pass through the channels and stop and watch Mtv with some STUPID music video on it with pretty much naked dancers on it. And the the thought came to me, that I don't miss having to monitor what the kids watch. I don't miss the suggestive commercials, I don't miss getting sucked in to an hour and a half of flipping channels only to say at the end of it, "Man, there is nothing on." (Well then why did I sit there and waste an hour and a half to figure that out.)

So for now, I think we will keep enjoying lots of videos from the library (Brooke loves little house on the prairie now), hulu, espn.com, and super why and elmo on ben's iPhone. I will continue to miss cnn, msnbc, and video on demand-but I will take missing that over having to worry and monitor everything that is on tv.

So we will still be that "weird" family without cable.

2 in a row..

It was another great morning. Although, this time it wasn't good becasue I got a lot of things done. It was great because I played with my kids. We played monsters and dragons, and swords and bears. Brooke and Livy have a "cave" in the corner behind the chaise. I loved imagining with them and scaring them and just letting our creativity come out. Another reason this was so great is because I have come to except the fact that I am not very good at playing with my kids. I love to take them places and ride bikes with them and go for walks and even do crafts and I love to read to them, but I am not good at pretending with little people or pet shop or dress up. And this morning I had so much fun! And they did too. I watched one of the power of mom videos the other day and it said something like the average women will spend 2,000 hours in line, 21,000 hours in traffic, 30,000 hours doing housework and only 1.5 hours a week playing with their children. I definitely don't want to be that kind of average mom. So, today and yesterday I decided to change that. I am going to play with my kids more. (And just as I wrote that last sentence, Brooke walked up and asked, "Mom, do you want to play pet shop with me?") So we played a bears in the lair and dragons and snakes this morning, then I took them to the park. Just us. And I focused on them. Playing with them on the slide and swings and the twirl-go-round and enjoyed them smiling with me. I felt like I was actually "in the moment" a lot yesterday and today. And although I still have another basket of clothes to fold from yesterdays laundry rotating and piles on the counter, I am going to go play pet shop and enjoy it.

Hopefully if I will integrate this into my life a few minutes a day...the hours will add up and someday soon I will figure out a balance between enjoying my kids and doing enough housework that I don't feel like I am drowning in a mess. But for now I am soaking in these moments and giving myself a little pat on the back for improving something during this Motherhood journey.

Productive Morning

I have been up for almost three hours, and it has been a good morning.

I have:

Cuddled two coughing kids

nurse the baby twice

Ran the garbage out to the passing garbage truck (I hate it when we forget the night before, but I am sure it is a good laugh for the neighbors when they see you running out in your PJ's trying to beat the garbage man to your curb!)

changed 2 messy diapers

made whole wheat waffles

unloaded and loaded the dishwasher (with brooke's help)

cleaned up breakfast

cuddled the kids again on the couch

make brooke's money jar and explain to her that she has to do extra chores to get paid and save it to pay grandma back for the toy she bought her at disneyland

made two dinners to take to friends

rotated three loads of laundry (wish they were folded already, but maybe in the next hour.)

taken apart a very frustrating car seat to clean the cover

And enjoyed listening to jackson spit raspberries and the girls play together in the family room.

Yep, it has been a good morning.

Aquarium

Yesterday the kids and I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Stephanie and Kora and Brightyn came with us and Dana and Jillian met us down there. It was so much fun. That place amazes me everytime I go. We were just there 4 weeks ago and I still stared in AWE at the amazing displays. The jellyfish are INCREDIBLE and the Sea Horses, WOW! I think the sea dragons are my favorite. We used to read about sea dragons in one of brooke's books and I never thought they could really look like that. But they are amazing. Thanks Mom for being a member, and thanks for being so generous in letting all of us use your passes anytime.
They have a brand new exhibit there past the sea horses. It was even new from when we went a month ago. It has sea turtles, warm weather penguins, flamingos, tropical fish and some really great interactive displays about how to save the environment. Did you know you can create your own energy power using cow manure and "flatulence" from a cow ? And this is even more mind boggling...if every american family cut down one red meat meal a week and replaced it with vegetables it would be equivilant to taking 20 million cars off the road? WOW. i had no idea that cows caused so much of the "global warming" problem. I am so glad my kids love that place as much as I do. Thanks again, Mom!

Outing in beach attire

I thought we were on the mend. Sunday evening Brooke was doing well and I was starting to be so grateful that this was only a 24hour bug. And then in the middle of the night we had another mishap. And of course, the bowl was next to her on the window side of the bed, and she aimed toward the dresser side. And her bottom drawer was left slighty open from the evening before. So not only am I washing more bedding, but about ten pairs of pants too. Lovely. I hate how bad it hurts when your kids are sick. You just feel helpless when you can't do anything. (But also a little, okay a lot, frustrated that all they do is wine.) I have to keep telling myself, I am a grouch too when i don't feel good.

Since we were cooped up ALL day sunday, I did some yard work with Livy running around. Brooke would just lay in the entry way and cry for me to be done and sit on the couch with her, but I managed to get some things done. And when I was trying to put the timer on the sprinklers the girls decided to put on their swimsuits. Brooke got hers on and then just sat there because it took all of her energy to just get dressed. So Livy played in the water and Brooke looked "hip" in her bathing suit and shades! The weather was absolutely beautiful!!
I decided I wanted to finish my earth boxes, so I got up the courage to take the kids to Reagan's nursery. (Although, it was nice to just be outside, I needed to go somewhere, but was also so exhausted from a fun filled night of clean up and kids needing drinks and nursing and blah. blah. blah. adn just the thought of loading everyone up was making me tired.) The girls were in there swimsuits (or doot-doots, as Livy calls them) so I just packed them in the car in their beach attire. Brooke wore her blue headband as always, my sunglasses (that she picked out for me for my birthday, but wears everyday), and mis-matched flip flops. Livy had on her swimsuit and crocks. And jackson was sporting his so cute basketball shorts. When I put them on this morning Brooke said, "Look jackson, you are just like Daddy." It was so cute. And I was in my grubs. We were in style.
When I got there I put the girls on a sideless wagon and pushed jackson in the stroller (pull, push, pull, push-all through the gravel.). It was a sight. People kept looking at me, I got some pretty good stares, a few smiles, one laugh-but only one person commented, "You have your hands full." The kids all did exceptionally well. Brooke complained about her legs aching and she was too hot, but over all it was a great outing. And I got my earth box planted and more lettuce plants, and my mom's planted as well!! Hurray for the warm weather. My peas are finally starting to grow (I was a little nervous because the night after I planted the seeds, it was SO cold). I so hope my garden does well this summer. Regardless, it is really fun for the girls to help me plant everything and anticipate the veggies growing!

Life

Ben left for China this morning for a week and Brooke threw up this evening....it could be a very fun week!