Tuesday, September 28, 2010
State of the Family #19
Miss Thumb Sucker, thankfully, hasn't made too many leaps since the last post. I am just not ready for my baby to be walking yet. . . but she gets closer everyday. She has started getting much more brave in letting go when she is standing up and is trying to pass between the couches and coffee table on two legs as well. I have a feeling she will be running all over before her 1st birthday arrives. Where did my baby go? I am also pretty sure I heard her say "no,no" last night too while I was feeding her before bed. She was repeating after her brother who was screaming, not wanting a sliver removed from his hand. She hasn't said it again since then though, so I am hoping it was just a fluke! She also had a bout of the croup this last week, but seems to be recovering well.
Miss Firecracker has been doing significantly better the last few weeks. She seems to go in spurts. Her fits have really diminished, not completely, but at least to a manageable level. She is so much more fun to be around when she can control her temper. . . but isn't that true of all of us! :) She was the dancing queen at the two weddings we attended the last 2 Friday nights, even copying Aunt Kelli in a "Poker Face" move. (Which I can't really tell you what song it is from or anything else, other than it was adorable and most people who listen to more than one radio station will probably know what song it is and what the move is.) She was shaking her hips and swinging her arms. . . this girl has rhythm! She has also been reallying enjoying joining mommy on her runs lately. She even told me the other day that when she gets big she is going to run and push me in the stroller! I thought that was a great idea!
Noisy Man has been testing boundaries these last weeks with his sisters. He is constantly picking fights with Miss Firecracker and has gotten his fair dose of reciting his Bible verses to "be careful to do what is right and live at peace with everyone" and "love is kind". They seem to remind him of how Jesus wants him to treat his sisters for about 5 minutes and then we start over again. :) But that is probably a 4-year-old for you! He had quite the even getting off the school bus the other day. We were running a bit late getting home from the bank, so our neighbor came over to meet him as he got off the bus. We were just 2 minutes behind as we met the bus pulling off our street. He was upset and crying that we weren't there, but mostly because he wasn't feeling well. He wanted held so I picked him up and he was just a sweaty mess. He said his head really hurt so we started to head inside to get him cooled off. . . then daddy came out after taking some papers inside and took him from me. As soon as I handed him off he tossed his cookies all over daddy. Poor thing (both him and daddy). But, man was I glad daddy asked for him! He ran a fever the rest of the evening and into the night but was much better by the next morning, thankfully. He also had his first ever sleepover party at the neighbors house as well. He had a blast at the Star Wars Fest they made it and is ready to do it all over again. . . I'm not so sure the mom of the sleepover would agree though. She had 10 kids there!
Daddy is preparing for duck season. . . that might cover it for him! He will be gone very early in the morning every Saturday morning and absent from church here and there for the next 2 months. It is his vice. I guess there could be much worse things to lose my husband to for a few mornings. :)
I have been lazy lately. My house is a mess. . . I still have some apples to finish up. . . I don't know what my problem is. I did so well for quite a while, keeping my house pretty clean, peeling coring, and slicing apples almost every day, keeping up with my laundry. . . then a busy weekend hit and it all went to pot. Now I can't seem to catch up. As daddy would say to our kids, I need a swift kick in the pants. Well, I guess that is my cue. . . get off the computer and get to work!
Oh yeah, I guess our other big news for the last couple weeks is that we refinanced our house for a 15 year mortgage and other than that we are DEBT FREE! We are pretty excited! We also mailed in our final check for our van. So, now we are done and the 15 yr will save us a TON of money in the end and hopefully help us get to build our dream home in the country a little bit easier as well. Although, I must confess. . . it will be hard to start another mortgage after whittling away on this one so well.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
North! to Alaska!
Update: We discussed the trip and decided that the challenges outweighed the fun. Mostly, the $330 it would cost us to get our passports without the guarantee that we would get them in time and the fact that it would be VERY hard (on us and them) to leave the other 2 kids for 10 + days. I am pretty bummed, but we promised since we weren't going this time that we would start saving up to go up for a full vacation in 2 or 3 years. Would be fun to do for our 10 yr anniversary in 2013. Seems so far away, but then we would have more time to fully enjoy Alaska. We would have also had to cancel our Colorado Ski trip plans for this upcoming Valentine's day if we did this, so now we can still look forward to our ski trip!
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
State of the Family #18
Miss Firecracker has thankfully continued to do well. She loved the day we spent out at the lake and going tubing with daddy. She wasn't quite sure about the whole lake thing at first since her brother informed her she would be swimming with the fish. But she had a blast on the tube! Pictures below. She loves wearing her Husker cheerleader outfit on game days, so much so that she didn't want to take it off to go swimming in the kiddie pool at the family get together at the lake, She jumped in fully dressed in her cheerleader outfit. She is also been on a singing kick lately, with her favorite tune being Jesus Loves Me. She belts it out whenever her little heart desires. It makes a mamma's heart proud!
Like I said, daddy went on his annual fishing trip this last weekend. They were gone from early Friday morning til past midnight on Sunday. If the fishing would have been better, they would have stayed through Monday, but they weren't having much luck so they decided to call it quits a bit early. I always feel so bad for him. They haven't had a great fishing trip in years. He finally gets to go out and get in some good fishing time, and they just sit on the water all day. I guess what they say is true though, "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work."
I have still been up to my elbows in apples, since we went and picked some more. I have peeled, cored and sliced about all I can take, but I still have 2 whole bags left to do. I will be thankful for all of it in 3-4 months when I can grab things out of the freezer and they are all ready to go. The kids are loving the applesauce though and I am still having a hard time keeping up with my dehydrating. I am also trying to start training for a 15K in October. . . yep a tad late to just be starting, but hopefully I will get there. I have been so terrible about keeping up with my runs I needed something for motivation. We'll see how it goes. The last new thing with me is play practice. Every year our church does a huge Christmas musical and after having to sit last year's out due to a newborn, I am very excited to get back into it! It means 2 practices per week most weeks but it is so much fun and totally worth it. I just love it!
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Loathing Laundry
Thursday, September 2, 2010
State of the Family #17
Survived the Sabbatical
#1). Holy buckets! I spend way too much time on the computer. I knew this and knew this was why God put my little hiatus on my heart. I got so much accomplished in the 2 weeks I stayed away from my computer. I have kept my house much cleaner (most of the time), finished some projects that were put on the back burner and played so much more with my kids. It has been great and it will really make me think twice before I plop my butt down on the couch and spend an hour on the computer.
#2)When you are trying not to use something at all, you realize how much you really use it. I look everything up on the computer, I do most of my shopping on the computer, I use it during my quiet times to find definitions and some cross references, I use it for recipes, for banking, for communicating and just about everything else. I must confess. I could not stay completely away for 2 weeks. I did have to check email to keep up with groups I am in that do all their communicating via email and my Pampered Chef business. I also broke my code to do things that my husband asked me to do that required computer and a few other things that saved my family money and time that had time restraints on them. But as for frivolous computer usage and all FB (other than one time that I had to get a phone # off my inbox) I stayed away. But it was crazy how much, whenever I was done with one task and searching for the next to do, I would think "I'll go do a scrapbook page, or look at recipes on Pioneer Woman, or read up on some one's blog." So, when I couldn't do these things that didn't necessarily need to be done I was getting necessary stuff done.
#3) Man, I felt out of the loop for those weeks. I had no clue what friends were up to and what was going on in their lives, but you know what? I survived. It didn't really matter at all and I got to catch up when I saw them next. I have resolved to be on my FB account much less in the future, like only once or twice a day.
#4) I will be using the computer significantly less in the future. I think my little break has really showed my how much I over-used it before and will cause me to be more conscious of how much I use it from here on. I decided it would be a great idea to charge my laptop at night and unplug it in the morning. If I close it between uses the batter should last about an hour and a half. With all computer usage throughout the day, when the battery runs out, I am done. An hour and a half seems like tons of time on the computer and I hope that I don't even require that per day. But I like to scrapbook in the evening after the kids go to bed and that is computer time as well and can take quite a bit of time, so hopefully pre-bedtime usage is closer to 45 minutes.
We'll see how that idea works.