green goopy winter

I have a green goopy cold that started Christmas as a sore throat and turned runny, then green and I'm blowing my nose on anything I can get my hands on, napkins, paper towels, toilet paper and I petitioned my husband to please, please pick me up some nice soft tissue on his way home from work. Then my poor little baby has it and just this morning my son has it.

I dragged myself out of my pajamas to take me daughter to her friends and slink into the store unnoticed to buy some strong sinus, cold medicine. As I drove I tried to remember when I last saw a sunny day, other then the sunshine I see in my children's faces when they are happy. Then I thought what a blessing is my husband (unbreakable type) and even my oldest daughter (who I only nursed 2 months) doesn't seem to get sick easily.

My baby is showing signs of being nurturning, she is starting to carry baby dolls around and is competely facinated with her baby cousins (trying to give them her bottles and food), she likes to be held along with the babies and poke their cheeks and tummys. When her older brother feel asleep on the couch, she got this sweet look on her face and helped me pull the blankets up around him and gently touched his hair.

Of course being cooped up at Christmas time isn't easy. Twice my kids have convinced themselves that we were going swimming of all things, even got all dressed up in their swim suits. Only my children could look outside at the piling snow and the below freezing temperatures and think this is just the weather to go swimming in, they are little fishes. Luckily family have been in town and we've had some game nights where the kids can see their cousins and aunts and uncles, grandma and grandpa and old grandpa (what they call their great-grandpa).

Christmas was nice we only saw my parents and siblings for 2 hours. Most the the day was just our own little family playing together, me taking a nap and just relaxing and driving around to look at all the lights. Tonight family is getting together again, but I think we'll just stay home, borrow "Amazing Grace" from my parent's DVD library and get better. When it is cold outside it is nice to just cuddle up in a warm blanket with my husband and watch a movie, put on a flannel shirt, eat a warm dinner, play a game with the kids and stay home finding sunshine in being happy in our house.

Ahhhhhhhh !!!!

Right now I sort of hate love my husband. I love him so much, but that love is frustrating sometimes when I think I will make a large (king size) denim quilt for him and it is so huge and I’m not a seamstress and the machine isn’t working and I’m just going crazy and at that moment I hate whatever made me start this project in the first place.

When it comes to mechanics I am a mess, I still can’t figure out how to turn my son’s transformer toy into a robot. It took be a half hour to figure out how to make it into a police car.
The sewing machine I inherited from my seamstress grandma. It is suppose to be fancy and wonderful but I have a hard time getting it to do a simple stitch without bunching up on the back. The pedal is so temperamental and not working all the time. However, I just finished the last stitches to the top of the quilt and I am elated and no one better point out all those mistakes and where the corners don’t match or that I have a dark square next to another dark square.
This whole project has me missing my Grandma D. My sister and cousin have really taken off with sewing and doing wonderful.

I hope she would be proud of me for making the attempts I have, even though I am so intimidated by the sewing at times. I have been trying to do a homemade Christmas as much as I can this year. It has been fulfilling and frustrating at times. I have been making lots of crocheted hot pads and hoping to make some hats to give friends and family. I’m making even tying the quilt fun, right now I’m watching Lord of the Rings while I tie and I’m hoping some family will come over tomorrow to help so we can visit while we tie.

Little miracles

Monday our faucet in the kitchen just wouldn't turn on. It had been leaking and having problems for a while so my husband had called Moen (which has great customer service by the way) and ordered new parts. It was suppose to be another week before the parts came in and we were just worried what to do. After a whole day without water in the kitchen it was already too much for me. Then my husband got the mail, and what do you think, but the parts had come a whole week early, my husband put everything together that night and it is amazing how smoothly the faucet turns on and off, I could just spend all day turning it on and off (which somedays it seems like I do). That is just one example of a little miracle in our life.

Snow, snow, snow

It is a winter wonderland here. Everything is completely piled with snow, snow and more snow. Yesterday, while my husband shoveled I got the kids geared up and my son and I made a snowman, our little baby toddled around in her boots (just a little bit too big) and we had a blast, there is so much energy with the first big snow fall. I woke up just excited for Christmas and doing stuff for family.

My mind raced about with all that needed to be done in preparation, hot pads to make, packages sent, my husband's quilt to finish. Anyways, after putting together fake English crackers for Mary's class party I realized it was after 12:30 and remembered it was my good friend's baby shower. I had missed it by almost an hour, I felt so horrible, I had been looking forward to it all week and kept the invitation right by the door so I would see it and remember. I ran over as soon as I could and we had a nice visit and she was very forgiving, but there is no denying the fact I have been losing brain cells and it may be getting worse. She had a beautiful miracle baby boy after having three gorgeous girls and each pregnancy she has so many complications, she was on bedrest with this little boy six months and we all were praying for her.

Then off on errands as a family, no way I was going to drive, the snow was coming down harder and harder. We made it to Target and thought we would run in for a few things. Target is a great one place shopping most of the time, but not yesterday. They didn't even carry mince meat and only had one kind of tread, but we got my daughter some much needed boots. By the time we got out of the store it was a blizzard even my husband could hardly see. We decided to cancel our other plans of driving up the canyon and set off for home.

The kids were so, so excited with the snow we thought we'd venture locally and went sledding at the highschool, even the baby made a run down the hills with Daddy. There is something about the cold and snow you just want to curl up at home with the fire, a movie, hot coco and sweet things, so of course we went to Day's (our local market), and spent too much money on steaks, donuts and cookies, just letting our instincts take over.

We dropped by our friends who we had lent our car (since they their two cars break down at once) just to see how they were doing of course it ended up being over an hour visit. That is what happens when you have two couples that both like to talk and children who go wild having fun together, but so enjoyable. We borrowed a bunch of their movies (saved us a trip to the video store) and went home for the most delicious grilled steak. My Hubby experimented with honey, salt and sugar on the meat Oh, oh so, so good. Then we watched a Christmas movie with the kids, us all curled up in blankets eatting sweets.

Off to bed, my Hubby thought it would be fun to see just what Santa felt like and stuffed a big round pillow in his sweats and zipped up his jacket. Ho, ho, to the kids and read them Good King Wenchelas and waddled around turning to get through doorways and such. We didn't get half of the things on our to do list done, but we sure had fun. Sadly though our baby doll threw up everything in four episodes afterwards, not the perfect way to end the evening but she was so sweet even when she was sick and would cuddle with us. Memories to keep.

Children are fun

It is so hard as a parent to keep a straight face when you need to be serious with your children, but the situation is so funny. Yesterday Jacob came up to me while I was on the computer and siad, "Mommy, can you help me?" I look over and he was completely tangled in yarn, it wasn't tight or anything and I just wanted to laugh. He had taken a batch of yarn and strewn it all over the family room and and tangled himself in it. After surpressing a laugh I explained it was esspecially important he not put things like string and such around himself esspecially his neck. I am quite expert at untangling yarn but when it got to be around his neck I didn't dare chance making it tight and ended up cutting the yarn, since he had like 20 layers around his neck on top of all the layers surrounding his body.

My baby is toddling all over the place, shuffling her little feet, it is nice because 2 of the 4 teeth coming in have broken through and she is a happier baby. Her favorite thing is to pull all of the books off the shelf and follow me or her dad around. She cuddles with us and it is so cute. My baby doll loves to be held and loved and is so sweet and gives loves right back putting her little head on our shoulders. She has learned how to scream in protest when her siblings take things from her or she is uncomfortable. That has been an adjustment, because she had such a soft cry as a baby I had to put a moniter in her room so I could feel like I could check if she was crying.

My oldest daughter said a very funny and cute thing too. We were at the dinner table and wanted to know if she was going to have a babysitter. The last two nights because of my birthday and a work party we had gone out, and had they had babysitters (neighbors with kids or grandparents). My sweet girl was trying to convince us we needed to go out and that when she sees it is 8:00 she always tells the babysitter she needs to go to bed. My hubby and I both laughted at that. My sweet girl is the very hardest to go to bed every night and is a bit of a night owl. She also told us mom needed her "love time" so we needed go out. I couldn't help it I just laughed and laughed. Isn't that cute, she made it up all on her own. I will sometimes just give her one on one and even rock her and give her time to know I love her and I guess she on her own figured that was my time when I got to go on dates with Daddy.

Starting over

I was so excited, thought I had found a great storyline for my novel. It still might work, but I just saw the latest Die Hard movie and was disappointed to find that they had used a great portion of my idea for my novel (which was very exciting). I don't want to look like a copy cat so I am going to have to rethink the direction I was going with my novel. Of course the main characters in my novel are a school teacher and a mother of 6, very different then the Bruce Willis hardcore police man type and I hadn't thought of the sudden take down everything approach the bad guys in Die Hard use.

I had a wonderful birthday. I always look at birthdays as a mile stone, a time to grow up just a little bit more make some changes, reevaluate my life, that sort of thing. I have no regrets in my choice of husband, my children, our home I definitely could use my time more wisely, but funny as it sounds, I think I am becoming more efficent time wise so I can get more done and still enjoy a book, a show, even a computer game once in a while. Even better if I could cut back more and focus on more serious things like writing more, being a better scriptorian, more updated, more well read, contribute more.

I'm all about balance and trying to find that perfect balance in life, it has to be contantly changing to be a good balance for where you are that day and what your circumstances are, I think contentment comes with finding the right balances in life, for your own personal life.

My weird imagination

One thing I've always known I've had is an imagination. My dad said something wise about that "sometimes your greatest strengths can be your greatest weaknesses." I've thought about that often. Sometimes my imagination doesn't allow me to fully live in this world. I have to be careful because when I read a book I literally become the character in the book I really live a life through the character (I have to be extra careful what I read and watch).

Sometimes my imagination would prove I have a hard time growing up. When I was ten I prayed for a year for a pet dragon, God did answer my prayer, but not quite in the way I wanted. I was given the impression that after this life I can create all sorts of things (my imagination will come in really helpful then), and that I shouldn't go about asking for selfish things to test the Lord's promise to answer our prayers. When I was 15, in highschool, I found Neverending Story the book at the library. I secreted it away to my room, made sure no one was around and I wouldn't have any interuptions and opened the book, truly believing for a moment that I would have the same experience Sabastion had literally, physically going into and affecting the story.

I have found imagination can come in handy in parenting, cooking and cleaning. It is amazing some of the fun recipes I've been able to come up with just using what I had on hand. Like my special curry dish. I cube apples, potatoes, turkey or chicken, a bunch of raisins or craisins and dose them with olive oil and curry powder and cook in the oven 350 degrees till done, who would of thought it would taste so good. In parenting it is good to be creative in encouraging your kids in getting things done, teaching them to play, and how to discipline them without hurting your relationship with them. I've found the more I use my imagination with my parenting the better my children respond. Of course cleaning. If I can be creative and redecorate a room, rearrange things and maybe make the cleaning of a room into a piece of art I always am much happier and find greater fulfillment.

I worry and I worry. It seems like my husband can not travel beyond five miles without me without my worry imagination kicking in. I atomatically worry about mugging, crazy drivers, most of all of him being killed and how devistated I would be and how I would want to be there for my children but I would be a basketcase. What if he went into a coma or was injured and how would I respond and the entire senerio goes through my head. When I was sixteen my Dad accidentally took me to a foriegn film that had a horror ending, I couldn't sleep till I collasped for two or three months. You can tell what sort of movies I do not chose to watch.

Imagination does come in great for writing. Of course I have spent a great deal of my adult life overcoming my challenge of not finishing things. I really have to force myself to on long things. I've started about 20 novels and many short stories. I do o.k. on poems and short exerpts, but it is my goal this year to finish to go forward with my imagination and do the longer more challenging writing. Well, that is my exerpt on my weird imagination.

Saturday cleaning

My son and I went through an entire Mr. Clean sponge today working on getting the crayon, pen and marker off the walls, we only got halfway done when the sponge had completely dissinigrated. The walls did look a little cleaner, my son got a lesson in work, and hopefully this will be less necessary in the future.

Many times you would look at my husband and I as parents and say, wow they must be brand new parents, because we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. We forget, we shouldn't let the kids play till their work is done, we should always make sure the Friday night movie is done by bedtime (because they will still want the whole bedtime routine), and we are not mean parents if we have expectations, and do not have markers in the house even the washable ones. Everytime I am frustrated with my spoiled children, like today when the simplist of tasks made them cry, I can only blame myself. Yet, we are learning and it is getting longer between mistakes, so at least we are on the upside.

Parenting is such a learning process and growing process for me. It gives me insights into my own weaknesses, tantrums, manipulations that I wasn't even aware before till I see them in my kids. I always feel sorry for my oldest sweetheart, the one who is the experiment child the one who has to take the brunt of our mistakes and learning.

Tonight we watched Deck the Halls movie it was really cute and was about the most important thing, time with our families. That is what our kids like most for holidays is quality and quantity time with us unfettered by the daily responcibilties. It was esspecially cute tonight as my little baby doll found some kleenex. She came up to me and kept rubbing it on my face and I just burst out laughing when I realized that she was trying to wipe my nose. She has had a runny nose and so that has been a constant thing we have been doing for her.

Have a wonderful Saturday too.