Heart On The Line

Our Year Of Service: Bike donation

2012-01-21T15:52:00.003-07:00

Along with our year of adventure we decided to do a year of service. Once a month this year we're going to find one act of service to do as a family. There are so many organizations in our area that need help in one way or another and once a month we're going to pick one and do something for them.

This month we have chosen the Boise Bicycle Project. They take donations and supply refurbished bicycles to children, refugees, low-income families and the homeless. We have three bikes that have been sitting in our garage for a while that no one is using and we decided that there was no better use for them than to donate them to the Boise Bicycle Project.

So today Shawn and the boys got them out of the garage and took them over to be donated. I hope that they can go to someone who can use them and love them.

Our Year Of Adventure: Swimming

2012-01-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

One of things that made our year of adventure list was swimming. The reason it made the list is because it's one of those things that we always intend to do and just never get around to. I actually really love to swim. I grew up near a public pool and I spent my summers there as a kid. I wish that it was the same for my kids. They don't get nearly as many opportunities to go swimming as I did as a kid. There isn't a public pool near here except the pool at the YMCA, and we always intend to take them over there but life gets busy and we never go.

Last year I signed the kids up for swimming lessons at a private home near here. The lady teaches lessons in her backyard pool and she did a really great job with the boys. They weren't very good swimmers when they started but she worked with them really hard and in a few weeks I was amazed at how far they had progressed. I think taking lessons made them realize how much they enjoy being in the water so they've been even more excited to go swimming.

So while we were in Cascade we took advantage of the pool at the hotel and we took the kids swimming twice. What we discovered is that not only do the boys like swimming, Clarissa is a little fish!! She LOVES the water. The boys were always a little timid about putting their head in the water when they were little but Clarissa has no fear of water at all. All three of the kids had a really great time and I think we're definitely going to make swimming more of a priority from now on.

Our Year Of Adventure: Cascade

2012-01-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

Obviously I'm a little late getting these blog posts done, but better late than never, right?!:)

Our trip to Cascade was awesome and we were all sad to go home. We had a great time and we're already looking forward to going back, hopefully next year! It's something I'd love to make a yearly event if we can.

While we were there we went sledding, we went swimming, we watched movies, we played games, we took a drive to explore the area and we basically just had some fun family bonding time. I love little trips like that where we don't really have a lot to do except hang out together.

One thing we did plan to do while we were in Cascade was feed the elk like we did a few years ago. There is a great place up there where you ride on a horse drawn sled out to the middle of a field and feed hay to a herd of wild elk. We did it a few years ago and absolutely loved it so we looked forward to doing it again this year. Unfortunately that little adventure got cancelled due to lack of snow. We've had a really weird lack of snow all over the area this year. We don't always get a lot of snow in Boise, but the mountains are usually pretty covered this time of year. We hoped that we'd get enough snow by the time we went to Cascade to do the elk feed but the called us the day before and said that it wasn't going to happen.

We woke up Monday morning to pack up and go home and just as we were leaving town it started to snow and we actually had a hard time getting down the mountain because in some areas it was snowing pretty hard! I'm sure that there's enough snow up there now to do the elk feed but unfortunately I don't think we're going to make it back up there to do it.

But even without the elk feed we had a wonderful little getaway. I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to do it. January is usually my least favorite month of the year but so far we've managed to turn this January into lots of fun! :)

Our Year Of Adventure: Sledding

2012-01-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

The year of adventure has begun! This weekend we're in Cascade, which is a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere just under two hours from our house. Going to Cascade is on our year of adventure list and a few of the things we're going to do while we're here are also on the list. I put 24 things on our list because I figured two a month would be plenty but by the end of January we will have crossed off four, so if things continue this way I may add more to our list later in the year.

Anyway, my plan is to blog each adventure as we do them so I'll make a blog post for each of the things we do while we're here.

First up is sledding! We put sledding on our year of adventure list because every year for the past few years we've said that we're going to do it but snow is kind of hit and miss in Boise and we never grabbed the opportunity when the snow fell. Our year of adventure is about not missing opportunities so we decided that this year we were going to make it a priority to go no matter what the snow situation was.

Unfortunately the weather has been extra uncooperative this year and there has been absolutely no snow at all. It's pretty much an unprecedented lack of snow. The ski hills haven't even been able to open. That made sledding seem impossible until we found a place in the mountains about an hour from our house that has a snow making machine and they've made an awesome sledding hill! It's on the way to Cascade so it made it the perfect way to kill to adventures with one stone.

So we packed up the car this morning for our weekend adventure and the first stop was sledding!

It was kind of funny to get to the sledding place and see the brown hills with no snow on them and then one big snowy area. The sledding place is awesome, they did a great job with it! You rent tubes for an hour and then the tubes hook onto a cable pulley thing that pulls you to the top of the hill. When you get to the top there are six lanes of varying degrees of steepness and you pick your lane, hop in your tube and fly down the hill! The kids had an absolute ball! They had a double tube that Shawn used with Clarissa since it was too steep for her to go down on her own. She wasn't so sure she liked it and after a few times she was cold and had enough, so I hung out with her for a while while the boys took some more runs down the hill. By the end Shawn and Josh were going down the REALLY steep trails! It looked scary but they loved it!

After sledding we got back in the car and made the rest of the trip to Cascade.

Cascade is a middle of nowhere town with not a lot to do but for some reason I love it up here! It's a pretty drive and they have a super awesome hotel here that I love to stay in. It's pretty and peaceful and quiet and it's great for a quick little getaway. The hotel is super cute and unique. It has a cozy cottage feel and it's always beautifully decorated. The last time we were here not long after Christmas they had Christmas trees in all the rooms. They have a pool for the kids to go swimming (another item on our list, I'll blog about it tomorrow) and it's been fun just to hang out and relax. The kids just went down to the lobby for bedtime cookies and milk, which is always really fun!

I'm not sure what we're going to do tomorrow. We'll do some swimming, maybe watch a movie in our room and probably go drive around and explore. Honestly, I don't even care what we do, I'm just happy to be here!

Looking forward, looking back

2011-12-31T23:29:00.003-07:00

In 53 minutes it will officially be 2012! We had an awesome Christmas and a really fun week. Shawn has been home all week, so it's been really fun to have so much family time. We recently introduced Josh and Matthew to The Amazing Race and we've spent the past week having marathons of a few seasons that we never saw. It wasn't the most productive week, but it was ridiculously fun! We're all raced out now though. I don't think we're going to be ready to watch it again for a little while!

Tonight we were going to have a party at our house with friends but one family had to cancel so we decided to just to have a quiet night at home. Clarissa went to bed at the normal time but the boys are down in the basement having a Wii tournament, trying their hardest to stay up until midnight, although Josh is not a night owl and I'll be shocked if he makes it!

Shawn and I are sitting side by side with our laptops working on some church stuff that we need to have ready for tomorrow. We're not very exciting on the last night of the year!

I'm also sitting here finalizing our list of adventures for next year! If you saw my post from earlier this month, our family is declaring next year our year of adventure and we've spent the past few weeks coming up with a list of things we want to do as a family next year. The list got pretty long and then I decided that it needed to be whittled down to 24 items. That's two a month, which is plenty. Any more than that and we may be scrambling to finish them. Some of the items are big and some are small, but they're all fun and we're excited about all of them!

I decided that I'm going to write out the list and post it to the side column of my blog and I'll cross things off as we do them and blog about each adventure. Then you can follow along with what we've accomplished and what we still have to do! Some of the things on the list won't make sense to anyone but us ( in fact, a couple of them sound kind of ridiculous, lol), but I'll post them anyway and explain them when we get to them.

So tonight as we approach the end of one year and the beginning of another, it has made me think about the past year and do a little life review. Frankly, this past year has been one big ball of suck. I spent most of it battling annoying health problems and feeling stressed out, anxious and overwhelmed. I don't even know what lead to all the problems I had this year but all I know is that I'm working really hard to change things because I'm determined that next year is going to be different.

2012 is going to be about fun and adventure and letting go of the worries and anxiety. I am SO excited about our year of adventure. I've been talking about it nonstop for the past few weeks. I'm ready to shake things up around here. I'm ready to laugh more and worry less. I'm looking forward to new experiences. I think it's going to be a good year for our whole family.

So goodbye, 2011. Goodbye and good riddance. In 36 minutes the clock strikes midnight and it signals a new year and a new start. Bring it on! :)

Merry Christmas from the Whites

2011-12-24T19:19:00.001-07:00

(And yes, Clarissa's pajamas are almost identical to last years. She loves the pajamas I bought her last year so much that I decided she needed another pair!)

A Year of adventure...and giving!!

2011-12-13T17:04:00.000-07:00

Our year of adventure idea is just getting more exciting! We've been going through our list for the past week or so, putting more ideas of it of things we want to do next year and I think it's going to be really fun for our family and in the process I've come up with another idea!

This is kind of a long story, but the short version is that yesterday I got a booklet from a friend of mine that someone compiled of all the charitable organizations in our city and what kinds of help they need from the community. Some of the organizations are ones that I've heard of but lots of them are ones that I didn't even know existed and they all list donations that they're in need or of services that can be performed.

As I was looking down the list it occurred to me how simple it would be to provide services or give donations to some of those organizations and how sad it was that up until now I wasn't aware of any of these places and haven't been giving service like I could have been. I do service through my church but I haven't done much service for my community lately. I've been so busy focusing on myself this year that I haven't been looking around and see what I could be doing for others as much as I could have.

So along with our year of adventure next year we're including a year of giving. Every month next year we'll go through that booklet and as a family decide on a service that we can provide or a donation that we can give and we'll go do it. There are things like donating dog food to the humane society, donating childrens books to shelters, making hats for cancer patients, making baby blankets for the hospital, making or buying colorful pillowcases for children in the hospital, donating school supplies to the Step Up program that provides GED tutoring to the homeless, etc. The list goes on and on and on. There are so many organizations that need help and so many different ways to help if we just make ourselves aware of what's out there. I'm going to learn how to make loom hats, because there were a few different organizations that take those and I think making pillowcases out of fun fabric for hospital patients would be simple and fun.

So on that note, I wanted to encourage others to also do a year of giving. It's amazing how many opportunities there are out there and a lot of them aren't time consuming or expensive. Even things like donating your old coats or outgrown baby gear can make such a difference.

I'm really looking forward the coming year. There are lots of fun things ahead!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

2011-12-12T14:08:00.001-07:00

Christmas season is in full swing at our house! I'm getting so excited for it this year. Last week we had a big Christmas party here for all the teenage girls from our church and that was really fun. My two amazing, wonderful friends came over the night before and helped me decorate my house for Christmas, which was SO sweet of them! I had been stressing out about getting my house ready for the party and they showed up ready to get to work. In two hours we had lights and garland and decorations all perfectly placed and looking beautiful. Now every time I look around my house at all the pretty lights and decorations I'm reminded of how wonderful my friends are and how they knew exactly what I needed.

I took a few pictures but it's a million times prettier in real life!

We've been so busy the past couple of weeks. We had the church party here last Wednesday and then Saturday was Shawn's work Christmas party and they had it at our favorite restaurant, so we were really excited about going to that! Tonight we're going to a friends house to have an Amazing Race finale party, which we're all excited about! I know we're a day late. Don't tell us who won. :)

I'm almost done Christmas shopping, which has been going well this year. Some years I have a really hard time figuring out what to get people, but this year it all kind of fell into place and it has been really fun picking things out.

This is the first year that Clarissa is old enough to kind of understand what's going on and that has been fun. I don't think she completely gets the whole Santa thing, but she's loving all the lights and Christmas trees and all the excitement. I asked her what she wanted Santa to bring her for Christmas and she told me Strawberry Shortcake and Hello Kitty. Santa is working on that.:)

All in all things are going pretty good around here these days. I'm still having some annoying health problems but I'm trying to stay busy and not focus on them. Having Christmas stuff to focus on helps. Next week the boys will be out of school for Christmas break and I'm looking forward to that! I love this time of the year, and all the excitement in the air!

The Year of Adventure

2011-12-02T16:41:00.001-07:00

So I keep saying that next year is our year of adventure. A few years ago I started assigning themes to our year for some reason, lol. The year we brought Clarissa home I kept saying that it was the year of adoption, when all the excitement and adoption stuff was going on.

After that crazy year I kept saying that the next year was going to be the year that nothing happened. As much fun as the adoption was, it was mentally exhausting by the time it was all over and I needed a year where there were no major changes, no big vacations and we could just get into the groove of having three kids and let everything mellow out a bit.

Then this year just sort of become the year of my early midlife crisis or something, lol. I've been calling it my year of reflection, where I needed to sort some stuff out and decide where my life is going. It's kind of been the year of crappy health problems as well, unfortunately, which is kind of what prompted the year of reflection.

Anyway, after everything I've been through this year I've been declaring next year our year of adventure. We're going to get out of the house more, go on vacations, try new things and have some fun. My therapist said that it's interesting to make a graph of your life and look at when you were happiest and what was going on in your life that made it happy. It occured to me that I was a lot happier when we were going on regular adventures. We used to take a lot more vacations, spend a lot more Saturdays at the lake or on a day trip in the car exploring and we always had something fun going on. That has stopped in the past few years. It needed to stop, or at least slow down, for a while for several reasons and that was fine, but now it's time to bring some fun adventures back into our lives. We all need it.

So that has been my focus over the past several weeks, trying to come up with some fun adventures for next year. Today I was talking to Josh about how I wanted him to help me come up with some ideas of fun things we could do next year and it turned into the two of us writing a list of fun things and that turned into an even better idea!

What we've decided to do as a family is spend the next three weeks coming up with ideas of things we want to accomplish or adventures we want to take next year. Some of them are big things and some of them are small things. Some of them cost money and some of them are free. So far we've added things like go geocaching, go hiking, rent a cabin, finish the backyard movie theater and have a neighborhood movie night, plant a garden, fly a kite, go to the zoo, visit a pumpkin patch, go to Oregon, invite the neighbors over for ice cream and game night, build a model plane/car and fly/drive it...the list goes on. We're still working on it, but it has prompted some fun discussions and a lot of "hey, you know what I've always wanted to do?" conversations.

We will finish our list by the end of December and then we're going to type it up and hang it on the fridge. As the year goes on next year we're going to do everything on the list and cross them off as we do them. We're all ridiculously excited about this! I don't think I've been this excited about anything in quite some time, actually! This will be so great for our family. Lately it seems like we get to the end of the summer or the end of the year and we have a list of things we wished we had done but never got around to. Hopefully our year of adventure will change that.

One thing that I definitely knew I wanted to do was to plan some kind of getaway in January. I get super blah every January for some reason. It's a long dark month and it always seems like it goes on forever! So I've been looking for a fairly inexpensive, easy getaway that we can do for a couple of days in January to give us something to look forward to and to break up the long month a little bit.

Today I found it! I got an e-mail about an hour ago that the hotel we love in a middle of nowhere town about an hour and a half from here is having a 50% off sale! We stayed at that hotel a couple of years ago when our exchange student Melissa was here and we took the kids skiing and and we took a sleigh ride and fed some elk, which was SO fun. The hotel is so cozy and adorable and so much fun to stay at and the elk feeding place is close by, so it's a really fun winter getaway. The boys are out of school for a couple of days in January so I called Shawn and told him to get the day off and I called the hotel and booked it for two nights! I think that will be the perfect start to our year of adventure!!

Woohoo, I did it!

2011-11-30T20:03:00.001-07:00

I managed to blog every single day this month! I've tried these little challenges before and I always manage to forget and give up about a week into it, so I'm pretty proud of myself for actually following through this time. :)

Things are going good around here today. It was therapy day and today we decided to start scaling it back to every other week instead of once a week. That's a good thing, because it means that everything is going well enough that I don't need to go once a week, but honestly I'll really miss going weekly! I like therapy. It's been really good for me and I definitely think it has helped. My anxiety isn't totally gone but I'm dealing with it a lot better. Therapy also helped me unload some baggage that I had been carrying around for far too long. It's been freeing. This was the year of working on myself and therapy was an important tool in that process. I'm really going to miss it when I stop going completely.

Other than that there's not much new going on around here. Shawn has the day off tomorrow and I'm looking forward to that. I like it when he's home on a weekday. It doesn't happen very often, but it's always nice. We have errands to run and Christmas stuff to do. I'm excited to get the tree up!

So I guess this wraps up my month of blogging. They say it takes 30 days to make a habit. We'll see if blogging daily has become a habit. Something tells me that it hasn't, but you never know! :)

Day 29

2011-11-29T16:31:00.001-07:00

Woohoo, 29 days in a row! I didn't think I'd make it this far! :)

So I don't really have anything specific to blog about today so I went to the blogher site to borrow their writing prompt and I noticed that I've missed a lot of them, so I copied the past week or so and I'll catch up. Here we go.

What is the last thing you do before bed?
Usually take allergy medicine, check my e-mail and plug in my iPad. Heaven forbid it not be charged in the morning since checking my e-mail is also the first thing I do when I wake up!

Describe an heirloom that has been passed down through generations of your family. What is its significance to you personally?
I don't think I have anything that has been passed down through generations. I do have a special heirloom though. When I was growing up my grandma had a china cabinet that had a lot of antique dolls in it. I used to love to look at all the treasures in that cabinet when I was a kid. A few years ago my grandma sold the house they had lived in for 50 years and moved into a condo and she decided to give her dolls to her granddaughters. She picked out a doll for each granddaughter and included a note about where the doll came from. I absolutely adore my grandma and I was so touched to receive that doll. It's something that I keep carefully stored in a box and someday I'll give it to Clarissa.

Do you enjoy being alone? Would you rather be around other people?
I actually do enjoy being alone. I almost enjoy it too much sometimes and I have to force myself to get out and socialize. I'm a homebody. I don't mind being alone or just home with the family.

Write about a piece of music that changed your life forever. What do you feel when you hear it now?
That's a hard one. There are a lot of songs that have affected me in one way or another. There are several hymns that have special meaning to me. Pachebel's Canon in D was the song that first made me love classical music. We studied in in a humanities class and it was the first classical piece that I truly loved. I listen to it sometimes when my anxiety is bothering me because it's really soothing. Even some country songs evoke a strong memory. Anything sung by Vince Gill reminds me of an old boyfriend. The song Amazed by Lonestar was playing when we picked Josh up from the nursery at the hospital to take him home and when we hear that song Shawn and I always say "awww...remember when we took Josh home from the hospital and this song was playing?". Every time. It's obnoxious. :) I could go on. The soundtrack to my life is extremely long. It;s so long that it could be one of those compilations with it's own late night infomercial, only I'd be the only one who would buy it and I'd listen to it and say "awww...." when every song started. :)

What is the luckiest thing that has ever happened to you, and why?
I'm not a super lucky person! I've never won anything in my entire life. My mother, on the other hand, is always winning something. She was born with the luck gene and didn't pass it on, I guess! If you want the honest I-know-this-is-cheesy-but-I'm-going-to-say-it-anyway truth, Shawn and the kids are the luckiest thing that have ever happened to me. And now that I think of it, that makes me pretty darn lucky.

Awww...:)

Back to Life

2011-11-28T15:34:00.001-07:00

Well, the vacation fun is over and it's time to get back to real life! I had a really fun trip to my hometown. I needed a few days away REALLY bad! It helped, my brain feels clear again and I'm ready to get back to work around here.

So today I've been taking advantage of Cyber Monday and getting most of my Christmas shopping done. I'm a big internet shopper. I prefer to shop that way, especially for Christmas presents because I can do it without the kids and everything just shows up at my house in discreet brown boxes that are easy to hide. I've got probably 80% of my shopping done now. I got the big things done today that I knew were going to take some searching around, so that's good.

I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year. I'm anxious to get the Christmas tree up and get into a Christmasy mood. We have some fun parties and things coming up that I'm looking forward to. Next week Shawn's company party is at one of our favorite restaurants, so we're really looking forward to that!

One of the other things I've been working on is planning the summer vacation that I'm so excited about. Over the Thanksgiving holiday our trip to Canada turned into a trip to the Oregon coast. I was telling my mom all about our plans to go to Canada and Shawn and I kept bringing up the trip we took to the Oregon Coast with the boys when they were little and we kept saying how much fun it was and my mom said "well then why don't you just go back there?". Shawn and I looked at each other and you know what, that's where we really want to go. I wanted to do Canada because we've never been there before, but it's a lot farther drive that Oregon and with Clarissa being so young still I'm not sure how much fun a super long car trip would actually be. I still want to take the trip to Northern Idaho and Canada but I think we're going to do it in a few years when a super long car trip would be easier.

The Oregon coast is still a long drive but we can stop in Portland for the night and go to the zoo and do all the other things we love to do along the way. I absolutely love going to the Oregon coast. That's where we spent our honeymoon and some of the best vacations I've ever had in my life have been there. It's peaceful and beautiful and everything I love about going on vacation.

The Oregon coast is stunningly beautiful. It's ocean on one side and forest on the other. Renting a beach house is really fun there because you feel like you're in the woods but you can go right outside and play in the ocean. I love it there because it's never super crowded so it's quiet and peaceful but there are still a lot of fun things to do. The more we talked about it this weekend the more we realized that it was the perfect location for our summer vacation.

So I've had a great time searching for beach houses to rent. There are a million different options all up and down the coast so I'm still not sure exactly where we'll end up, but I'm having fun looking. Part of the fun of a vacation for me is planning it. I'll spend all winter planning it before I decide on anything.

So between Christmas shopping and summer vacation planning, I'm busy and happy and life is pretty good at the moment. Yay! :)

Fun in the car (aka I'm bored)

2011-11-27T11:01:00.001-07:00

On The Road Again

2011-11-27T09:38:00.001-07:00

Well, the fun is over and it's time to head home. I'm writing this from the freeway. I love going out of town but I alway hate the drive home. Only 280 more miles to go!

Muppets!

2011-11-26T15:22:00.001-07:00

We just got back from seeing the new Muppet movie with my brothers family. I've been waiting for months for that movie to come out and it was just as awesome as I hoped it would be! I love the Muppets. I've seen the old Muppet movies a million times and I never get tired of them. The new movie is super cute with lots of fun music. I can't wait to see it again!

We're having a great time at my moms house. I'm going to be sad to leave tomorrow. The kids have loved playing with their cousins and I've enjoyed spending time with family.

For now I'm off to eat some turkey noodle soup! Yum! :)

Checking in!

2011-11-25T15:30:00.001-07:00

We're having a fun trip! We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday and today we're doing some shopping and visiting family. For now I'm off to run errands with my mom! I love being back in my hometown with my family. No matter how long I've been gone this town still feels like home.

On the road!

2011-11-24T08:30:00.001-07:00

It's 8am and we're on the road. Only four more hours till we're at Grandmas house! :) Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

It's almost Thanksgiving!

2011-11-23T14:13:00.001-07:00

We're leaving tomorrow morning to go to my hometown for Thanksgiving. This afternoon I've got therapy and lots of packing to do before we go.

I'm not sure how I'm going to keep up with my daily blog posts while I'm gone, but I'm going to try my hardest. I may be making short posts from my iPhone. I've been doing so good on my blogging every day for a month goal, so I'm hoping to keep it up through the end of the month!

I'm really looking forward to getting out of the house for a few days. I've been counting down the days all week! It will be nice to see my family, do a little Christmas shopping with my mom and let the kids run around with their cousins. We haven't been there since July, so it will be good to spend some time with family.

The other thing that I've really been looking forward recently is the new Muppet movie! I'm ridiculously excited about that movie. Next weekend I think we're going to get a babysitter for Clarissa and take the boys. I'm a huge fan of the old Muppet movies. I watched them over and over growing up and I can't wait to see this one!

I don't really have anything else to discuss today so I guess It's time to close the laptop and start packing. I hope all my blog readers have an awesome Thanksgiving! :)

Vacations!

2011-11-22T15:17:00.001-07:00

Remember the other day when I said that I needed something to pull me out of my rut and that I really needed a vacation and that I needed some adventure in my life?

I've been thinking about it for the past several days and I think I've determined that vacations are definitely what is going to pull me out of my funk and I've started planning some fun adventures!

Before Clarissa came home we used to go on vacations a lot. They weren't always big vacations but every few months we would get out of the house for a few days and do something. I LOVE vacations. I love being a tourist, I love road trips, I love sleeping in a different bed, I love seeing new things, I love all the planning that goes into a vacation...I love it all.

Then Clarissa came home and we had a million reasons why it was never the right time to take a vacation. Frankly, the adoption was a huge drain on our finances, so for a while we couldn't afford vacations like we used to, and then Clarissa hit that toddler stage where it was hard to take her anywhere and a vacation just didn't sound like that much fun. Then I've had a string of health issues this year, we've had other stuff going on and suddenly we realized that it has been ages since we just packed up and left town for a few days. I need that in my life. It recharges my batteries and gives me something fun to look forward to. Vacations are exciting and they make me happy.

So next year we're taking vacations. Big ones, small ones, I don't care, but the Whites are leaving town. We've been talking more and more about going to Canada next summer and I think we're going to do it. We live in Southern Idaho and Canada boarders Idaho on the Northern tip, which is around an 8ish hour drive from here. We've never been to Northern Idaho or Canada but everyone says that it's beautiful. I think we're going to go for a week, maybe in July, I haven't decided when yet, and we'll spend a few days in Northern Idaho and a few days in Canada. I'm still at the beginning planning stages but I'm really excited about it!

I'm also planning a couple of short trips earlier in the year to our favorite little town in the mountains. We used to rent cabins in the mountains all the time and we haven't done it in ages. I just got an e-mail from the cabin rental company we use and they have a bunch of good specials through the winter, so it's not really that expensive to get away for a few days. I think we're going to try to rent a cabin for a long weekend at the end of January and again for spring break at the end of March. I love renting cabins up there. It's only an hour away but it's in the middle of nowhere and there's really not a single thing to do up there but hang out and play games, watch movies, enjoy the beautiful scenery and have fun family time. Every time we go we have a blast. It's something that I've really missed these past few years.

So there are my big vacation plans. I've declared next year our year of adventures and I'm determined to make it happen!

50 Things I'm Thankful For

2011-11-21T17:43:00.001-07:00

Shawn
Josh
Matthew
Clarissa
Friends
My Church
Freedom
Shawn's job
Adoption
My blog readers
My cat
Therapy
Prayer
My house
Music
Photography
Laughter
The birds in my tree
Yoga
Animals
Warm blankets
Rain
Electricity
The internet
Old friends who keep in touch
Books
Food
Cell phones
Hope
Date nights
Sunshine
Doctors
Clarissa's birth mother
Flowers
The fact that Shawn and Clarissa are downstairs right now singing the Muppet theme song at the top of their lungs and it's making me smile.
Ice cream
Good neighbors
Love
My Ipad
Shoes
Christmas
fuzzy socks
green grass
popcorn
Korean dramas
Crayons
Family vacations
Toddler hugs
Lemon flavored lip balm
A million other things I don't have room to list. :)

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

2011-11-20T21:58:00.001-07:00

I'm too tired to blog tonight, so instead you get a Youtube video of otters holding hands.
Awww...:)

Day 19

2011-11-19T20:21:00.001-07:00

I don't have anything exciting to talk about today so I'm going back to using a blogher writing prompt, which is "describe the happiest moment of your life".

That's a tough one because I honestly don't think I have one happiest moment. There are several events that pop into my head, like my wedding day, the birth of my children, our trip to Korea to get Clarissa, etc. It would be hard for me to say that one of those events was more happy than the others because they were all pretty amazing events in my life.

In general, my happiest moments are those spent with my family. Every now and then we'll be doing something together, like a family vacation or a holiday or even a fun movie night and I'll think to myself "this is a PERFECT moment". One of those moments that you just stop and take a mental picture of so that you will remember it forever.

A few years before we adopted Clarissa we went to Disney World with the boys. That was an absolutely perfect week. I remember stopping several times and looking around at my kids having so much fun and thinking that that was the most perfect week of my life. We still talk about that trip. I remember sitting on top of a mountain in Korea at night listening to a Korean music festival thinking that that was another one of life's perfect moments. I've been blessed with many happy moments in my life. To choose one as the happiest would be impossible.

I'm grateful for those happy moments because the memory of them gets me through moments that aren't so happy. This year has been incredibly difficult for me for some reason. I honestly don't even know why exactly, nothing specific has changed in my life, I've just been struggling for the past several months. In fact, I was just reading back on my blog earlier today and it really struck me how much happier and more fun my posts used to be. I can tell that things have changed a bit this year. Sometimes I just get stuck in my head and it takes a new hobby or a vacation or some sort of change to pull me out of it. I just haven't managed to find the right thing to pull me out of it this time. I will though, I'm not worried.

Shawn and I went out for ice cream this evening and we were talking about taking a big family vacation next summer. We haven't taken a vacation for a while because vacationing with a toddler isn't really our favorite thing to do, especially one who is a terrible sleeper and doesn't sleep well away from home, but I think by next summer Clarissa will be old enough for vacations to be enjoyable again. We're thinking of driving up to Northern Idaho and into Canada. We really don't live that far away from Canada but neither of us have ever been. I think having a vacation to look forward to might be the thing to help pull me out of my rut. We need some time away. I told Shawn that I want next year to be our year of adventures. Before Clarissa came home we used to take a lot of day trips and do lots of fun things and we've quit doing that. This year has been my year of self reflection. Next year I'm shaking it off and going on vacation. I've got a lot more perfect moments to make. :)

Day 18

2011-11-18T21:39:00.003-07:00

I just got back from a date night with Shawn. We realized recently that we don't get out of the house without the kids nearly enough, and by not nearly enough I mean almost never! For a long time after we brought Clarissa home from Korea we didn't want to leave her with anyone while we were still working on the attachment process and after a while we just got so used to never going out alone that we just quit having date nights altogether. We're trying to change that though. We have the sweetest girl down the street who babysits for us. The kids love her and she does a great job with them.

Tonight we went out for Mexican food, walked around the mall for a while and then went out for desert. It was nice to get out for a bit. I feel like I've been cooped up inve house too much lately now that it's getting cold outside. It actually snowed for a few minutes here today! The kids were hoping for lots of snow but I'm hoping it waits a bit longer because we're going out of town for Thanksgiving and I don't like to travel in bad weather.

That's pretty much all at is going on around here today. I'm trying really hard to stick to my goal of making a blog
post every day this month but I'm struggling to come up with things to blog about. Remember when we were in the adoption process and there was always something exciting going on to blog about?! Maybe we need to adopt again so I have something to write about, lol. As fun as that sounds, I don't think it's going to happen. It's funny, whenever anyone asks me about the adoption process I look back on it so fondly and say how much fun it was, but then I occasionally read back on my blog posts and remember how much I complained about how hard it was! The wait was awful! I always forget about that part because the outcome has been so amazing and so worth it. We're pretty sure our family is complete and we're not likely to adopt again, but I admit there is a little part of me that wishes we could do it again.

Ok, well, I've run out of things to talk about so I'm off to put on my pj's and snuggle up with Shawn!

So that's where I got my love of books!

2011-11-17T21:03:00.001-07:00

Today you get another old photo. This one is REALLY old! It's my dad in 1955. I love this picture. I wonder what he was reading.

Blast from the past

2011-11-16T20:44:00.001-07:00

I don't have much time for a blog post tonight, so instead you get a random picture from my childhood.

That was my family (minus my sister who must have been taking the picture) on Thanksgiving. I'm taking a guess on the year but it was probably around 1990.

This picture makes me smile and brings back great memories. It seemed fitting to share because next week is Thanksgiving and this Friday would have been my dad's 64th birthday. I miss him. I'm grateful for these old photos so I can still see his face every now and then.

Day 15

2011-11-15T15:59:00.001-07:00

I'm completely out of blog topic ideas today. I checked the blogher writing prompt and started a blog post about it (the topic was to describe your favorite place) but it was boring and I wasn't inspired. The Oregon Coast is my favorite place, by the way.

So I'll tell two quick stories and be on my way.

The first story is that I made sugar cookies yesterday. Josh came home from school yesterday with a certificate that said he made the honor roll for first quarter. I was super excited about that and decided to make sugar cookies as a special treat to celebrate.

I really don't love to bake. I do make things occasionally but it's not my favorite thing to do. When I make cookies they're usually really simple ones. Sugar cookies are kind of a big pain to make and I always forget that until I'm halfway through making them and start asking myself what I was thinking. I found a cool snowflake cookie cutter that I thought would be fun. I envisioned frosting them with light blue frosting and sprinkling silver glittery sprinkles on them. They were beautiful in my head! :)

Three hours after I got the brilliant idea and starting pulling out ingredients, my kitchen looked like a tornado hit it, there was flour everywhere, I had frosting in my hair, there were cookie sheets all over the place and I was questioning my sanity, lol. I'm a messy cook on a good day and sugar cookies are just messy to make. The snowflake cookie cutter ended up being the wrong choice. They didn't look much like snowflakes in the end and they were really hard to frost with all the little pointy spikes. They weren't nearly as pretty in reality as they were in my head. They do taste great though and since I wasn't planning on entering them in a pretty cookie contest, I'd say they were a success. I just won't be making them again any time soon. :)

My second story is that this morning I was getting ready to take Matthew to school and my vision started to get weird. There was a bright, blurry spot in the center, almost like someone had shot a flashbulb in my eyes. I drove Matthew to school and got halfway home and it started to get worse. I started losing my peripheral vision. It was bright and sparkly and I couldn't see well at all. I was driving at the time, which was really scary. I didn't know what was going on and I was kind of freaking out.

I was close to home and managed to see well enough to get home and I immediately ran in the house and called Shawn and explained what was happening. By the time I got him on the phone my vision was clearing and it wasn't as bad. Shawn listened to me describe what had happened and then said, "so did you get the headache yet?" Shawn suffers from occasional migraines and what I described is exactly what happens to him right before he gets a migraine. He told me to go take some pain medicine right away and lay down. I did end up getting a headache, although not a terrible one, thanks to the medicine. My vision is fine now and I feel fine, it was just super scary for a few minutes. That has never happened to me before. I later looked up migraine auras online and what they described is exactly what happened. It's good to know if it ever happens again. It was scary for a few minutes.

So there are my two stories for the day. Let's hope I have something more interesting to talk about tomorrow!

Day 14

2011-11-14T13:41:00.001-07:00

Woohoo, I've blogged every day for two weeks straight! Yay me! :)

There's not a whole lot going on here these days. I've taken up yoga for my anxiety, which is super hilarious because I'm so bad at it. I bought a set of videos and there are some really great routines on there for stress relief that mostly just involve laying on the yoga mat and breathing deeply. I'm really good at laying there and breathing! :) But I've been trying to branch out and do some of the more strenuous routines (they're videos for beginners, so strenuous is relative. They're supposed to be really simple routines) and I've discovered that there is pretty much no one in the world less flexible than me! It's embarassing how bad I am at it. I start off super excited and determined to follow along and five minutes into it I'm sitting on my yoga mat giving the yoga video lady the finger while she turns herself into a human pretzel. It's super awesome, I'm sad that you all can't witness the hillarity that is me doing yoga.

In other news, this morning Clarissa brought me a book and asked me to read it to her. It was a big book about the solar system that we bought for one of the boys a few years ago. It's not exactly a picture book that you read to a two year old. I really didn't want to read a reference book about the solar system to her so I told her to go find me another book to read. Instead of finding another book to read she sad down next to me, opened up the solar system book and started pointing to planets and correctly naming them! Apparently Shawn has been reading it to her and teaching her the planets. I had no idea she could name the planets! Silly me for thinking that a reference book on the solar system was to much to read a two year old, lol.

Last night we went over to a friends house for ice cream. These were the friends we went on our yearly cabin trip with earlier this year. They compiled all the pictures and video that everyone took on the cabin trip and made a super cute video out of it that we watched last night. It was fun to relieve that trip and remember how much fun we had. I love those friends. They're like family to me.

And speaking of family, we're going to my moms house for Thanksgiving this year, which should be fun. I've been going a bit stir crazy around here lately and I'm desperate to get out of town for a few days. I'm looking forward to taking a break from life and spending a few days with family.

Well, it sounds like Clarissa is up from her nap so I'm off to entertain her and think about dinner! More blogging tomorrow! :)

More pictures!

2011-11-13T11:30:00.001-07:00

I'm finally getting around to sharing some Halloween pictures! Enjoy!

The Flowergirl

2011-11-12T10:14:00.001-07:00

Last month Clarissa got to be the flower girl in a friends wedding. I had the flu that day and felt so crappy I forgot my camera so I have no pictures of the event, which has been driving me me crazy, but I just got my hands on this one. It's not great, but Clarissa really looked so cute that night and she had so much fun being the flower girl! :)

Happy Pepero Day!

2011-11-11T14:10:00.001-07:00

Today is Pepero Day in Korea. Pepero is a popular Korean snack, sort of similar to a pretzel stick dipped in chocolate, but it's more cookie that pretzel. It's long and skinny like a pretzel. They're pretty yummy!

Anyway, a Pepero stick is shaped like the number one, so Korea celebrates Pepero Day on 11/11 every year. On Pepero Day you exchange Pepero with your friends and family.

It's a silly little holiday, but I'm kind of a sucker for things like Valentine's Day, where you give candy and gifts to the people you love, so Pepero Day is right up my alley, lol. We like to celebrate Korean holidays and traditions whenever we can. For one thing it's just fun to have more holidays to celebrate and as Clarissa gets older I want to make sure that she has every opportunity to learn about her birth culture as much as she wants to.

So yesterday we went to the Korean market and loaded up on Pepero and this morning we took them around to our friends. We had preschool this morning so we took enough for all the kids in the class and I explained the holiday to them and we ate Pepero at snack time and then we went to a few friends houses and shared Pepero with them. I also made Shawn take some to work with him to hand out to his employees. I'm not sure he wanted to explain to 30 employees what Pepero Day is, but he's a good sport. :)

After preschool I wanted to take a picture of Clarissa with her Pepero to post on my blog, but I sat her down, got one half decent picture, realized my camera settings were wrong and she went off to play before I could give it another shot. So here is Clarissa's Happy Pepero Day picture. It's not great quality, but with a face that cute it's still worth sharing. :)

Happy Pepero Day everyone! :)

Day 10

2011-11-10T17:17:00.001-07:00

I don't have much to blog about but I wanted to share a funny story from today.

Remember the Korean exchange student named Michael that we hosted for a month earlier this year? When he went back to Korea Clarissa kept asking where he went and we had to keep reminding her that he went back to Korea.

We talk about Korea a lot in our house and Clarissa is used to hearing about it but obviously doesn't really grasp what Korea actually is. It's interesting though, that she can often point out something that is Korean. If she sees a picture of an Asian person she will point to them and say "Korea!". Sometimes when she sees something distinctly Asian/Korean looking, like some of the Korean nicknacks we have or whatever, she'll identify it as Korea. But I'm sure that she has no idea what Korea actually is. She's just too young to understand it.

Today I needed to run to the Korean market to buy some Korean snacks called Pepero because tomorrow is Pepero day in Korea (I'll make a post about that tomorrow). I asked her if she wanted to go to the Korean store and she got all excited and said "I love Korea!". Somehow I think she thought we were finally going to that mysterious, much talked about place called Korea, lol. We got in the car and as I was strapping her in we were talking about Korea and she said "Anyoung!", which is Korean for "Hi". We have taught her that in the past but I had absolutely no idea that she remembered it or that she associated it with Korea. I asked her again what people say in Korea and she said "anyoung!". It blew me away! Smart girl!

So then we got to the Korean market and we did our shopping. I love going to the Korean market. I like to walk around and look at all the cool stuff. We paid for our Pepero and as we were walking out of the store, Clarissa looked back, all confused and said "where's Michael?". We've been telling her all this time that Michael was in Korea and she thought that the Korean market was Korea, so I guess she was expecting to see Michael there! It made us all laugh. But now I'm afraid one of these days I'm going to explain to her that she came from Korea and she's going to think we bought her at the Korean market, lol.

Check back tomorrow to hear all about Pepero Day!

Day 9

2011-11-09T21:20:00.001-07:00

Look at me, following through for 9 days! Way to go, Wendy. :)

Today was therapy day. I love therapy. It clears my head and for someone who always has a million things going on in her head, that says a lot.

So the blogher writing prompt for the day is this: When was the first time that you realized that your home was not like other peoples home?

Hmmm....I'm pondering the question and I'm not sure I understand it. Everyone's home is different, right? I think I realized that the first time I went to someone's house that wasn't mine, lol.

Ok, so I don't like the question very much, but I guess I can do a general blog post about home.

I grew up in the same house from the time I was four until I got married. My wedding reception was in the backyard. I loved that house. I loved the neighborhood, I loved the neighbors, I loved growing up there. It was a great neighborhood with tons of kids, where everyone knew each other. We played in the street and wandered in and out of each others houses during the summer when I was a kid.

Three months after I got married my mom got remarried and sold the house. It happened really suddenly and I was devastated when she sold that house. I had gone through a lot of change and upheaval and loss over the past couple of years with my dad dying and some other things in my life and it was just one more loss that took me a while to process. I struggle with change and after a lifetime of everything being the same, the years between 20 and 22 were just one big change after another. Some good changes, some terrible changes, but just a lot of change.

So it's no big surprise that in my adult life I have not been someone that likes to move or make major changes, especially to our living situation. Shawn and I have been married for 14 years and we've moved four times, and quite possibly will not move again until our children are grown and married. We lived in two different apartments while he was going to school and then we built a cute little starter home after he graduated that we lived in for three years and then we bought this home, which we intend to be our "forever" home. My goal was to find a house that we could comfortably raise our family in before our oldest child started Kindergarten and we managed to do that. We moved here when Josh was four and Matthew was one.

We bought our current house from my aunt and uncle. We originally moved to this city so that Shawn could complete a year of internships for college and when we came here for a weekend to look for apartments my aunt and uncle offered to let us stay at their house (this house) while we looked for a place to live. I had never been here until then.

The first time we walked into this house I gasped. We were broke college students at the time but this was my dream house. I don't know what it was specifically but it was weird, it just felt like my house. I remember laying in bed with Shawn in the guest room in the basement that night and telling him that this was the house I wanted to live in someday. And then we laughed because we were broke college students who couldn't afford penny candy, let alone a house.

When Shawn graduated we ended up building a house about a mile from this house and we used to come over here and visit my aunt and uncle all the time. We had Thanksgiving dinner here, we celebrated the fourth of July here...I loved coming to visit my aunt and uncle and I still loved their house. Shawn and I still whispered to each other that if they ever moved we were going to buy their house.

And then one day my aunt called and told me that they were moving. And suddenly so were we! Thirty days later we had sold our house and moved a mile down the road to this house.

I love that we have a history with this house. I have pictures of Josh as a baby in this house, when it still belonged to my aunt and uncle. Every now and then Shawn and I sleep in the basement spare room and giggle about the night we slept there and declared that this was the house we wanted to buy someday and how it felt like such an impossible dream.

So this is it, this is home. This is the house my kids will be talking about when they're all grown up. This is where they'll make their memories.

Home means stability to me. It's a soft place to land where the people around you support you and care about you and love you, warts and all. Our home is happy. We laugh and celebrate here. Friends are welcome here. There is lots of love here.

So there is my story about home. I'm nine days into my month of blogging. Let's see how long I can keep it up, lol!

Day 8

2011-11-08T20:54:00.002-07:00

Writing in my blog every day is hard when nothing interesting is going on around here! I'm really trying hard to stick to my goal of blogging every day but today I'm kind of searching for something to write about. It was a pretty low key day around here.

So I've gone back to the blogher site and I guess I'll use their writing prompt for the day, which is this:

Has anything traumatic ever happened to you? Describe the scenes surrounding a particular event.

When I think about traumatic moments in my life three events popped into my head. My dad's death, a difficult breakup and Matthew's birth. They were all traumatic for different reasons but when I think of life changing, difficult moments in my life, those three things probably top the list.

My dad died of cancer a few weeks before my 21st birthday. He was first diagnosed with gallbladder cancer the year before. I was living across the country from my family at the time, as a live in nanny in New Jersey when my mom called to tell me that they discovered cancer on my dads gallbladder during routine gallbladder surgery. Being so far away from home was difficult. I couldn't be there for my mom and I didn't feel like I had a lot of details about exactly what was happening.

I was only supposed to be in New Jersey for a year and my year was almost up when the cancer was discovered, so I finished out my last few weeks or so in New Jersey and was able to join my family again fairly quickly.

The cancer my dad had had spread and was not treatable. They removed what they could but they knew it would come back. We were lucky to have another good year with him where he was healthy and happy before the cancer reappeared and he passed away.

Losing a parent is really hard no matter how old you are. My family changed a lot after he died and I've struggled with the trauma of all of those changes for years. Therapy has helped. Talking through some of that old trauma has been really helpful to me.

Around the same time my dad died I was dealing with trauma #2-the end of a relationship that was really significant to me. It's a long story that I'm not going to go into, but the end of that relationship affected me deeply and it changed me in a lot of ways. I was young and naive and I guess you can say that I put all my eggs in that relationships basket. When someone you love decides they don't love you back...well, it's traumatic. It took me a while to heal from that.The fact that it happened at the same time my dad was dying didn't help. Life in general was traumatic for a while. Thankfully that's when Shawn showed up. All my lifes traumas are a little more tolerable when he's around. :)

Trauma #3 was Matthew's birth. I think I've shared that story here before so I won't share the long version. The short version is that the cord prolapsed during labor and I was rushed into emergency surgery and that was honestly the scariest moment of my life. It was a horrifying experience that obviously ended happily, but it does rank as the #1 scariest moment of my life. The short version of that story doesn't sound so bad. The long version is kind of awful. I'm grateful for a quick thinking doctor and a bit of divine intervention that saved that situation from being a lot more traumatic than it was.

I've had other traumas and challenges in my life, as we all have, but there are the three that came to mind when I thought about the blog topic tonight. Something I've learned as I've examined my life in my quest for a better me this year is that all experiences have value, even the crappy ones. I learned important life lessons from the traumas in my life, the big ones and the small ones. What I've learned from the self reflection this year is that you can either let your challenges get you down and make you weak or you can learn from them and let them make you stronger. These days I'm aiming for stronger.

Dreams

2011-11-07T14:16:00.003-07:00

Last month when I was sick and didn't feel well enough to do anything but lay on the couch I watched a lot of Netflix and I got hooked on the show Felicity. I've been working my way through all 84 episodes for the past few weeks.

The show is all about college life and I sometimes watch it right before I go to bed so I've been having dreams about college lately. Last night I had a dream that I decided to go back to college but I couldn't decide what to major in, so I kept researching different careers to decide what I wanted to do.

I decided that I wanted to be a school librarian so I was going to schools to talk to their librarians about what degree you need to be a librarian. Then Shawn decided that he was going to go back to school too. Shawn has a doctorate degree in Pharmacy and a career he loves so has no reason to go back to school, so I was trying to tell him that he didn't need more college but he said that he needed to take three more classes to get his black belt in pharmacy, lol. Who can argue with that, right?!

Then we found out that it was going to cost us $27,000 a year to go back to school, but I told Shawn that was fine because I'd be able to pay that back in no time with my new career as a school librarian. First of all, I'm not sure what college I was planning to go to that cost $27,000 a year, but I'm pretty sure you don't have to go to Harvard to be a school librarian. Second, apparently my dream self was horribly misinformed about how much money school librarians make, lol. Maybe Shawn could help pay it back once he became a black belt in pharmacy because I'm sure pharmacy black belts make a fortune!. :)

In real life I never graduated from college, something that has always bugged me. I had big plans but life got in the way. I went for a year and decided that the major I chose was not what I wanted to do and my life was kind of in turmoil at the time so I took a year off to sort things out and while I was trying to regroup and figure out what to do next I met Shawn. When we got married he still had four years of a very difficult doctorate program to get through and I needed to work to pay the bills while he was in school. By the time he was done with school we had Josh and eleven years later I still wish that I had managed to somehow fit college in there.

So once Clarissa starts school and I don't have little kids at home anymore I'm planning to eventually go back to school. I'm still not quite sure what I want to be when I grow up though, so like my dream I'm still trying to figure out what I would go to school for. When I was in high school my plan was to get a degree in psychology. Then when I actually got to college I changed my mind at the last minute and majored in social work. I took a bunch of social work classes and hated them. I knew it wasn't for me. I may decide to do what I wanted to do in the first place and get a degree in psychology. Or who knows, maybe I'll do like my dream and become a school librarian, lol. I do like books! Josh told me recently that I should be a zookeeper because I like the zoo so much. Honestly, I don't know if I really even care about having a career. I love being a full time mom and I'm not in a hurry to go back to work or anything. I just like learning and it would complete a goal I set for myself a long time ago to get a college degree.

So there is my dream. The real life dream I had last night and the dream I have of finally earning a college degree. It's good to have dreams!

Sunday

2011-11-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

I love Sundays. It's a day filled with family and church. We don't go anywhere besides church on Sundays, the rest of the day is family time and I enjoy the one day of the week when we're not running to a million different places and we can just have a nice family day.

Although today wasn't as relaxing as most Sundays because I had to teach a class of teenage girls at church. I'm the secretary in our church's young women organization. As the secretary I don't usually have to teach Sunday lessons, which works great for me because I absolutely hate standing up in front of people. I have social anxiety when it comes to things like that. But today was the one day a year where the secretary gets to teach the lesson.

I've worked on the lesson all week and I thought I would have to fill about 20-25 minutes. Because I don't like standing up in front of groups of people I've been stressing over this lesson for the past several days. I thought I was ready and I had a good 25 minutes worth of lesson planned.

Then I got to the class, the opening portion went way faster than it usually does and when it was time for me to teach I looked at the clock and realized that I had 45 minutes to fill. I'm really not a great teacher. I'm not used to doing it, I'm not great at winging it and having to fill 45 minutes with 25 minutes worth of information felt like one of those bad dreams when you realize that you have to take a test that you forgot to study for. Plus when I get nervous I talk really fast and I can trim a 25 minute lesson into about 15 if I don't remind myself to slow down!

For some people standing in front of 30 teenage girls and teaching a class isn't that big of a deal. To me it's just super intimidating for some reason. Put me in front of a group of little kids and I can teach all day but teenage girls scare me, lol.

In the end it went fine. I felt like I kept repeating myself, but I somehow managed to stretch a 25 minute lesson into 45 minutes and the good news is that it will be a long time before it will be my turn to teach the lesson again. Whew. I came home, put on my jammies and now I'm going to eat Halloween candy and watch The Amazing Race with my family. The perfect end to my Sunday. :)

Day 5

2011-11-05T20:49:00.001-06:00

I don't really have anything exciting to blog about today, so here's a picture of our family that my mom took in September. Maybe I'll think of something more exciting to blog about tomorrow.

Friday

2011-11-04T17:10:00.002-06:00

I didn't like the NaBloPoMo writing prompt for today, so I'm just going with whatever is in my head.

Hmm...now that I'm sitting here I'm realizing that there's not a whole lot of anything in my head right now. Darn.

Here's a cute story from this morning. Clarissa and I had preschool this morning and there is a cute little boy named Alex in the class. We were sitting there eating our snack when suddenly he stood up and took his shirt off. His mom asked him why he took his shirt off and he said "I'm hot!". Clarissa thought that someone taking their shirt off in the middle of preschool was the funniest thing that has ever happened in her life. She burst out laughing and hasn't stopped talking about it all day. All afternoon she'll be playing with toys or whatever and all of a sudden she'll start giggling and say "Alex took his shirt off!" It's funny what amuses a two year old. :)

Speaking of Clarissa, I feel bad that I didn't blog on October 15th, which was the two year anniversary of her joining our family!! TWO YEARS, can you believe it?! Clarissa celebrated the day by being the flower girl in a friends wedding. If you've been reading my blog for a long time maybe you remember me talking about our Korean friend Larry. He used to be a co-worker of Shawn's and when he found out that we were adopting from Korea he was really excited and we kind of bonded over it and became good friends. While we were waiting for Clarissa he came over several times and made us Korean food and helped me with the language and we all watched Korean movies together. Larry had a girlfriend named Michelle, who we also became close with. When Clarissa joined our family they were really exited for us and last year when they got engaged they asked Clarissa to be the flower girl.

I had really been looking forward to the wedding and the whole flower girl thing, unfortunately when the big day arrived it was the day I started getting the flu and I really didn't feel well. We got Clarissa dressed up in her super cute flower girl dress and went to the wedding and everything was beautiful but I didn't feel well that night. Clarissa did a great job as the flower girl though, which was a big relief because you can never predict what a two year old is going to do! :) The kids had a ball at the reception and they danced all night. You should see Clarissa do the chicken dance. I wish I had gotten it on video!

Anyway, we're super happy for Larry and Michelle and it was a fun way to spend Clarissa's second family day. It honestly blows my mind that two years has passed. Why is it that the two years we waited for her seemed to drag on for an eternity and the two years since have flown by like nothing? Probably because I'm way busier now! It's fun now to read blog posts from before Clarissa came home. It's fun to remember how excited I was and how I wondered what she'd look like and what she'd be like. Honestly, the whole experience far exceeded anything I could have imagined. Having Clarissa in our family has been amazing. I absolutely adore that little girl.

Things are going awesome with the boys these days too. Josh is settled in to middle school and is getting straight A's, which I'm really proud of. It was great to go to parent teacher conferences and have every one of his teachers go on about what a great kid he is. I'm proud of the person he is becoming. He turns 12 in May, something I'm not quite ready for, but I'm excited to see him learning and growing and becoming his own person. He's an awesome kid.

Matthew is loving third grade. He's still on a year round school schedule and his track break starts on Monday, so he'll be home for the rest of the month. It's weird this year because Josh and Matthew are on different school schedules now, so Matthew will be home and Josh will still have school. It's kind of a bummer for Matthew because he and Josh are such good friends and play well together when they're both home. He'll miss having Josh home. Matthew is in the gifted program, which meets one day a week and that program still continues through track break because it involves other schools that aren't on a year round schedule, so I'll still take him over there for part of the day every Tuesday through track break. He loves the gifted program so he's excited that he'll still be able to do that during the break.

Both the boys are still in taekwondo and doing great. They're high blue belts and are hopefully going to be advancing to their red belts next month. After that they just have high red and deputy belt (which is black and red) and then they'll get their black belts. The last few belts generally progress slower though, because it progressively gets harder, so it will be at least another year before they get their black belts. I'm proud of how hard they've worked. They can do things I never imagined that they'd be able to do!

So there's your update on what's happening in the kids lives these days. I have awesome kids and I'm proud of them.

NaBloPoMo day 3

2011-11-03T14:39:00.001-06:00

Today's writing prompt is this:

Can you listen to music and write? What song did you hear today?

Music has always had a profound effect on me. Certain songs can change my mood. Certain songs bring back very strong memories. I listen to music every chance I get. I usually have music playing in the background when I'm making blog posts. The song that is playing right now is Cannonball by Damien Rice. I like mellow songs when I'm posting on my blog. I have a playlist on my Ipad called "Mellow" and it has 136 songs on it. I usually start that playlist when I sit down to blog.

My musical tastes are kind of all over the place. I listen to a playlist with Lady Gaga, Pink and Bruno Mars when I shower in the morning to wake me up. I just finished listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to help get Clarissa to take a nap. I'm obsessed with the Wicked soundtrack and I love other Broadway soundtracks as well. The radio station in my car is set to country music because I can generally count on it to be safe for my kids to listen to and there is some nostalgia value in country music for me that I like.

The current song playing while I blog is The Promise, by Tracy Chapman. I love that song. It's haunting. Next up is Down by Jason Walker. Also a good one.

So on another topic, while I'm sitting here blogging and listening to music, I'm also eating a little bag of German chocolates called Schoko-Bons. When I was 19 I was a nanny in for a family in New Jersey. The nanny they had before me was German and while I was there she came back to visit and brought chocolates for the family. One of the chocolates she brought were Schoko-Bons. I'm not really sure why she bought chocolate for the kids because the kids mom didn't really let them eat much candy so I ended up eating most of it and I fell in LOVE with Schoko-Bons. I'd never seen them before and they're not easy to find in the US. For years I remembered eating those chocolates and wished I could find more of them and then one day years later it occured to me to search for them online, and of course you can buy anything online!

So now every now and then, like once every couple of years, I order myself a little bag of Schoko-Bons and I eat the whole bag all by myself. A couple of weeks ago when I was sick and feeling sorry for myself I decided that I deserved a little pick me up so I spent $8 and ordered a little bag of them online, which I realize is kind of ridiculous, but when they came in the mail the other day it was like a happy little present to myself. It's a small bag so I've been rationing them out over the past several days. It's a silly little thing, but sometimes you have to give yourself a little present for getting through hard times, right? :)

NaBloPoMo

2011-11-02T14:30:00.000-06:00

So I was surfing the web this morning and discovered that according the the Blogher network, November is NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). I'm not really part of whatever they're doing, I only stumbled across it by chance and I'm not part of their network or whatever, but I like the idea of it, so I've made a goal to make a blog post every day this month.

They're posting post topic ideas every day this month if you need some inspiration so I'm using their topic for today, which is "If you knew whatever you ate next would be your last meal, what would you want it to be?"

When I think of the best meal I ever ate it makes me think of Korea. One day when we were in Korea the adoption agency assigned us a tour guide to take us around the city for the day. Her name was Ji-Hee and she was awesome. We had the best time with her! We went to Gyeoungbokdong palace, we went shopping and then she took us out to lunch

We went to this tiny little restaurant off a side alley in Insadong, which is kind of a touristy shopping area. Insadong is one long street full of super cool shops and there are little side alleys along the way with neat little restaurants and different things. Anyway, she took us to this little restaurant and ordered tang soo yook. Tang soo yook is actually Koreanized Chinese food, I think. It's basically sweet and sour pork. I've had sweet and sour pork before, but this was a little different, and SO GOOD! Oh my goodness, I practically inhaled it. We ate some really good Korean food while we were there, but that tang soo yook was awesome.

So a couple of days later Shawn and I were back in Insadong, wandering around and doing a bit of souvineer shopping and we decided that we wanted to go back to that restaurant and have more tang soo yook. We thought we knew exactly where it was but when we started to go down the alley we realized that all the alleys looked exactly alike and we couldn't remember which alley we had gone down or what the front of the restaurant looked like. It was a tiny little restaurant and it didn't have a flashy front window or anything that would make it memorable. All we did remember was that there was a cool tree in the middle of the restaurant.

So we wandered up and down the alleys of Insadong for a really long time trying to find that restaurant again. We peeked in every window and couldn't find it. It was like it had dissapeared or something. It was the weirdest thing, because we were sure that we knew where it was but when we got to where we thought we remembered it, it wasn't there.

After walking for what seemed like ages, there it was. It was just a small little restaurant wedged between two other stores and it was really easy to miss. The only way we recognized it was by peeking in and seeing the tree.

So we went in and ordered more tang soo yook. The waiters didn't speak english and of course our Korean is minimal so we just sat down and said "tang soo yook!" They brought our food and it was as delicious the second time around as it was the first time and it was totally worth searching for.

When I think of Korea I always think of that little restaurant. When Shawn and I reminisce about our trip we always bring it up and giggle over the day we searched all afternoon for the restaurant with the tree in it. Some day I'm going to go back to Korea with my kids and we're going to go back to that little restaurant. I remember where it is. If you ever go to Insadong, it's down the first alley on the left, quite a ways down on the left hand side. Look for the tree in the middle of the restaurant, and be sure to order tang soo yook!

So if I knew that a meal was going to be my last, I would want it to be in Korea, in that little restaurant with the tree in the middle. Before I die I want to go back to Korea and eat tang soo yook one more time.

I'm still alive!

2011-11-01T21:13:00.000-06:00

People are starting to ask where I went (which I appreciated because I wasn't sure if anyone was even reading my blog anymore!) so I decided I'd better get here and update.

Frankly, it's been a pretty crappy month, which is why I haven't blogged. It's kind of a long story, but I've had one long string of assorted health problems. It started out with my heartburn flaring up again and it became hard to swallow, so they sent me for an endoscopy, where they stuck a camera down my throat to see what was going on down there. They ended up dilating my esophagus with a balloon type thing and now I can swallow again. Fun.

Then I started having crazy heart palpitations, which are super scary and feel like I'm having a heart attack 50 times a day. I had the same thing a few months ago and attributed it to some medication I was taking, but I"m not taking the medication anymore. I had a physical and they ran a million tests and there's nothing wrong with me, my heart is just beating weird for no reason. The doctor said it isn't going to hurt me and to just ignore it. Easier said than done.

Then two and a half weeks ago I got the flu and I've never been so sick in my whole life. I went back to the doctor to be tested for strep because it felt like I was swallowing glass but the test was negative. I had a fever, terrible congestion and my whole body hurt for two solid weeks. Even now I'm still not feeling super great. I still have a cough and my head is still a bit stuffy but I'm finally coming out of it.

So all in all, October was a pretty crappy month. I spent the entire month either on the couch or at the doctor. Neither of which were any fun. At one point Shawn and Clarissa got sick too and we were all so pathetic that neighbors started bringing us meals, which were wonderful and the highlight of my crappy month. I'm grateful for good friends.

So here it is, November first and I'm trying to pull myself back together and put crappy October behind me. In my quest for a better me, October was not successful. I missed some therapy due to being sick and my big plans and goal setting pretty much got abandoned for a bit.

It's OK though, I'm moving forward and not looking back. My latest plan in my quest to be a better me is yoga. I bought some yoga DVD's the other day and I actually kind of like it. I've always wanted to try it, but I'm sadly not flexible and I never dared to take a class at the gym because I really don't need a room full of people watching me make a fool out of myself. But now I'm doing yoga in the comfort of my home where no one gets to watch how bad I am at it! :) I've only been doing it for two days but so far I like it and it's been a nice stress reliever. Being sick for a month made my anxiety worse and now I'm trying to refocus and yoga is helping. I'm hoping that if I do it at home long enough I'll get good enough at it to take a class at the gym.

So there's a recap of my crappy month. Not much else is happening around here. Everything kind of came to a halt when I got sick. The kids went trick or treating last night and had a ball. This is the first year that Clarissa has been old enough to really kind of understand Halloween and she was SO excited! I have a bunch of pictures I want to share but my old laptop died and I just got a new one and I don't have Photoshop or any of my photos transferred over to it yet. That's my project for this week. I'll be back with pictures when I have things up and running better.

For now I'm going to eat some Halloween candy and go to bed. Tomorrow is a new day and it's time for me to get back to work!

Weekend

2011-09-18T20:34:00.000-06:00

Life is just really really good right now. Better than it has been in a while, actually. I was just thinking today how much things have changed in the past month. I've gone from feeling constantly stressed and frazzled to being able to relax and enjoying life so much more. I think therapy and my six months to a better me project is working. :)

It's been a really fun week around here. I discovered the awesome music and movement class at the library, I had a really fun lunch with friends, Shawn and I finally got to see The Help on Friday evening (loved it!!) and yesterday we went on a family nature walk that I really enjoyed and I got my camera out for the first time in a while.

I've been looking forward to fall. I love this time of the year so much. I love that the leaves are starting to change, I love that the weather is cooling off and I'm looking forward to pumpkin patches, corn mazes, apple cider and Halloween activities. October is one of my favorite months of the year. I'm hoping for more nature walks, lots more pictures and some other fun events coming up.

This week we're having some friends over for a season premier party for The Middle, which is one of my very favorite shows. Now that The Office is crappy I had to find some new shows to be addicted to! I'm looking forward to parking myself in front of the TV a few nights this week for all the season premiers.

For now I'm off to get the kids in bed, but I will leave you with a few cute pictures that I took of Clarissa yesterday. It's still next to impossible to get her to sit still for pictures, but I tried. I love that kid!

Therapy, week 5

2011-09-14T21:01:00.001-06:00

Therapy was great today, I'm really glad that I decided to do this for myself. The anxiety is way better and I feel like I'm coming out of the funk I've been in lately. I'm less stressed out, I'm happier and I've worked through some crap that I should have resolved long ago. I've also been able to get off the medication that had crappy side effects, which is what prompted me to do this in the first place. It's all good.

Today Clarissa and I went to a music and movement class at the library and it was awesome! I've been to several toddler classes at local libraries over the years and some of them are great and some of them are not so great. This one was fantastic! It's a newer library in a really pretty area and half of the class was indoors and half was outdoors. After they did their standard dancing around to silly music indoors we went outside and played with one of those big colorful parachutes. The kids shook it around, ran under it and had a ball. After that the woman who runs the class sat all the kids in shade, got out her guitar and they all sang together. Clarissa absolutely loved it and I had a really good time too. It was nice to get out for a bit and do something fun. Clarissa has finally reached the age where it's fun to take her places and we're really having a good time together. One great thing about my kids being spaced far apart in age is that I've gotten this toddler one on one time with all three of them. I like this age when we can do things together during the day.

She's so funny, every morning we drive Matthew to the bus stop (because his bus stop is in a ridiculous location. Don't get me started.) and as soon as Matthew gets his backpack on and gets ready to leave, Clarissa runs and gets the little pink backpack that she got from her foster mother in Korea and puts it on. She wears it in the car while we get Matthew to the bus stop and then we come home and she takes it off and puts it away until the next day. She adores her big brothers and always tries to do whatever they're doing.

The school year is going great for the boys so far. Josh seems to be enjoying middle school and Matthew is loving third grade. I'm proud of my boys. They're really good kids.

This weekend I'm looking forward to having a little date night with Shawn. He finished reading The Help and we're going to see the movie. It's been a while since we've been to a movie without kids so I'm looking forward to it! Yay for date night! :)

Happy Chuseok!

2011-09-12T19:31:00.001-06:00

We like to celebrate Korean holiday for Clarissa and today is one of the biggest Korean holiday of the year. It's Chuseok! Chuseok is kind of the Korean equivalent of American Thanksgiving. Families get together, eat lots of yummy food and the celebration goes on for a few days. It's early this year, some years it's not until October. For anyone who was around when we were grtting ready to travel to Korea to get Clarissa, it was the holiday that delayed our trip a few days because we didn't want to travel during the celebration.I was hoping to maybe have a big party and invite friends over for Korean food but the day kind of snuck up on me and I didn't have time to pull it together, so I just made bulgogi for our family. I taught Clarissa to say Happy Chuseok and it's sounds super cute. Shawn just took her to pick the boys up from taekwondo and I told her to be sure to say it to the Korean owner who is so cute with Clarissa. We'll see if she remembers.So it occurred to me recently that we're coming on the second anniversary of Clarissa joining our family! That really blows my mind. We brought her home on October 15, 2009. This October 15th she'll be celebrating by being the flower girl in the wedding of some good friends of ours! The groom is Korean and he and he fiancé are so sweet to Clarissa. They already picked out her flower girl dress and it's super cute! I just hope she's going to cooperate when it comes time to send her down the aisle! Two year olds can be pretty unpredictable. :)In other news, I read The Help the other day (I was feeling like the only person in the world who hadn't read it) and I LOVED it! If you haven't read it i highly recommend it.Shawn is reading it now and we're going to see it at the theater when he's done. Yay for date night! :)It sounds like Shawn is home with the kids so I'm off to here how taekwondo went!

Happy

2011-09-11T23:19:00.000-06:00

It's past my bedtime and I really ought to go to sleep, but I haven't blogged in a while and thought I'd try to get a post in really quick.

Things are going really great here these days. Therapy has been really helpful and I'm making some positive changes that I'm happy about. I look forward to going each week. My therapist is really nice and we've had some good talks. My anxiety is noticibly better. The techniques he's given me have helped. I've been working on some self reflexion lately, trying to get back to who I am and what I want in life and refocusing myself on getting where I want to go. I'm reexamining the past, working through some things, letting some things go and that has been helpful.

Yesterday I got my journals out from high school and read through them. It was funny to read some of the things I wrote. Some things I had completely forgotten about and I revisted some things that are still very fresh in my mind. Some parts made me laugh and others reopened up some old wounds a bit. It was good though. It was nice to remember who I was at 17, so hopeful and excited about the future. I had big plans back then. Some panned out and some did not but I think I've basically gone in the direction I thought I would. It was interesting reading through that journal, knowing what I know now. It was interesting to read about my 17 year old self working through problems and making decisions when now I know what the outcome of those decisions would be. There were a few parts where I just wanted to smack my 17 year old self upside the head.

I've been working in therapy on goal setting. My therapist has me making lists and I'm really enjoying it. This type of therapy is only intended to be short term and I'll miss it when it's over.

In other news, the boys are settling into school and I've started mommy preschool with Clarissa. I love that she's getting old enough now to do things like that with. I have a lot of fun with her during the day while the boys are gone.

Ok, so now I really am going to bed. Tomorrow is a new day!

Gratitude

2011-09-02T16:07:00.000-06:00

On my quest to better myself I started a gratitude journal yesterday. A gratitude journal is just a notebook (or an ipad app if you're permanently glued to your ipad like me) where you write down all the little things that you're grateful for each day. It's a nice way to help you focus on the all the good things in life. Sometimes I get so bogged down with life that I forget to stop an enjoy it. I think a gratitude journal will help me remember to enjoy it.

It's actually really helped me see the positive side of every situation. This morning I woke up with a horrible headache and instead of focusing on the headache I took a minute to write in my gratitude journal how grateful I am for Tylenol. I paid the bills yesterday and instead of grumbling because I hate paying the bills I wrote how grateful I am that we have the money to pay the bills. There was a time in our marriage where that wasn't so easy. Some other random entries in my gratitude journal over the past two days:

I'm grateful for the birds in my tree. Watching them makes me happy.
I'm grateful for Josh happily unloading the dishwasher without complaining.
I'm grateful for the phone call I received from a friend.
I'm grateful for Shawn for a million reasons.

One of my favorite books is The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. When I think about gratitude I think of Corrie Ten Boom because she was such a great example of being grateful no matter what your circumstances. If you've never read the book it's the true story of a Christian woman who was put in a concentration camp during WWII because she helped hide Jewish people in her house and how she relied on her faith in God to get through such a horrible experience. I've read that book a million times and I never get tired of it. There is one part where she talks about how they housed many women in a room with straw mattresses that were covered in fleas. It was a terrible situation where the woman were just covered in flea bites. But because of the fleas the guards didn't like to go back to that area and the women were able to secretly have Bible study without getting caught. She talked about how grateful she was for those fleas and that has always stuck with me. If she can be grateful for fleas in a concentration camp the rest of us have nothing to complain about!

So today I'm grateful for Corrie Ten Boom's example and I'm grateful for my gratitude journal because it's helping me remember to focus on the positive things in life. The more I write the more I realize how much I have to be grateful for.

First day of middle school!

2011-08-30T15:46:00.001-06:00

Today was the big day, Josh finally started middle school. I've kind of been dreading this day all summer. Actually, I've kind of been dreading this day for the past eleven and a half years, lol. I survived it though and Josh had a great day.

He was super nervous this morning and in typical Josh fashion got up at the crack of dawn to get ready. Middle school starts a lot earlier than elementary school so I think we're all going to have to get used to the new schedule around here. Shawn drove him to the school and got him settled and then I nervously waited all day for him to come home and tell me how it went and Clarissa walked around saying "where's Josh?" all day.

At 3:00 Josh bounded in the front door with a huge smile on his face and I could officially relax. The first day of middle school was a sucess. The great thing about the the timing of his school schedule is that he gets home when Clarissa is usually taking a nap and Matthew is still at school so we had a few minutes of quiet time and we sat on the couch and ate cookies while he told me about his day. This will work out great because then when Matthew comes home Josh will already be talked out and I can have some time to hear about Matthews day without both kids bombarding me with homework and papers to sign at the same time. I think this new schedule is going to work out nicely.

Josh likes his teachers, he made some new friends, he got on the right bus and all in all it sounded like a great day. I guess if my kids are going to refuse to stay little forever I'm going to have to get used to all this big kid stuff! Josh is a good kid, I think he's going to be just fine. And as for me? Well, I have therapy tomorrow so I have faith that eventually I'll be just fine too, lol. :)

Back to school!

2011-08-22T11:38:00.000-06:00

After a stressful morning getting Matthew to school, he started his first day of third grade today! Because our elementary school is on a year round schedule and the middle school is on a traditional schedule, Josh still has another week of summer vacation before he goes back. So we get to do the first day of school twice this year!

Matthew normally rides the bus but I like to take them on their first day so this morning I drove him to school. We left with what we thought was plenty of time to spare and the school is only a few miles up the road, but when we got to the intersection near the school we discovered that some genius had decided to close the road today to start a road construction project and we had to take a huge detour. We ended up having to go miles out of our way to get to school and the detour caused a big backup of all the people trying to drive their kids to school on the first day and we ended up sitting in traffic forever. We were still sitting in traffic at 9:05, which is when school starts. I wasn't too worried, because half the school was stuck in traffic with us.

We FINALLY got to the school, found a place to park, which was insane, and got Matthew into school and we could not find his classroom anywhere. We walked up and down the third grade hall and looked at all the names on the door and his teachers name wasn't there. At this point I was stressed and cranky but we managed to find someone to ask and found out that his classroom is in a trailer outside this year. Awesome. So we went back outside, SUPER late at this point, found his classroom and the teacher and the other kids in his class were headed back outside so she could show them where to line up at the beginning of the school day. Matthew hurried and got in line with the rest of the kids, I met his teacher for half a second, I didn't even get to go in the classroom or help him get settled or anything and that was it. I said a quick goodbye and got in the car to make the long drive back through the detour again to go home. The whole fiasco took an hour.

That was not how I planned the morning to go. Fortunately Matthew is so easy going. I don't think it phased him much, he was just happy to be there. He's been really excited to go back to school.

Here are Matthew's first day of school pictures and the latest addition to the yearly collage! To tell you the truth we cheated and did Josh's first day of school pictures today too even though he doesn't start back until next week. He has to leave early for school and I wanted take pictures of the boys together so I figured it would be easier to do them all today. I'll wait until next week to post Josh's picture though when I post about his first day of school.

Therapy, week one

2011-08-17T18:06:00.000-06:00

So I'm back from therapy and it wasn't so bad! I was nervous about it but it went well. It was just sheer coincidence, but my therapist is actually my second cousin, lol. I have a huge family on my moms side and when I was referred to him I immediately knew that we were probably related because of his last name but he wasn't someone I knew or had even heard of before. We compared geneology and his grandpa and my great grandpa are brothers. Small world!

Anyway, it went fine, it wasn't as weird and awkward as I thought it was going to be and I think I'll get a lot out of it. I'm looking forward to going back next week.

Everything else is going good this week. We had fun celebrating Matthew's birthday on Monday. We went to a local family fun center that has an arcade and food and other fun things. They have bumper cars and I seriously don't think I've ever had so much fun on bumper cars before. The place wasn't very crowded so we just kept going again and again. We had a good time crashing into each other. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

Tonight I'm getting ready to take Josh over to the middle school for an open house. We'll get to find his locker and see his schedule and take a tour of the school. Middle school is throwing me for a loop. Maybe I'll feel better after I walk around with him and help him figure out where things are. Or maybe not. Darn this growing up stuff!

So there's my update. Therapy isn't awful, Matthew's birthday was fun and Josh is growing up too darn fast. Life just keeps on moving!

Happy birthday Matthew!

2011-08-15T15:14:00.000-06:00

It's hard to believe that my sweet little boy is 8 years old today! We had fun this morning watching him open presents and this evening we're taking him out for a night of fun activities. It's actually been really nice this year because most years school starts either on his birthday or the day before and as hard as I try his birthday always kind of gets lost in all the back to school craziness. This year school is starting a week later so I'm enjoying that we can celebrate his birthday without trying to fit the activities in with the back to school stuff.

So of course today has gottten me thinking about his birth and that sweet little baby I brought home 8 years ago. Matthew's entry into the world was not an easy one. Due to a very scary prolapsed cord emergency I was rushed into surgery and I was unconscious for Matthew's birth. Shawn and I both missed witnessing his birth. They woke me up an hour later to tell me I had a healthy son and I was so relieved that he was OK that I didn't even care that I missed the whole thing. My favorite memory of that day was when the nurse was trying to wake me up and she told me that I had a healthy 8 pound 1 ounce baby boy with blond hair. Everyone else in our family has brown hair and I just assumed that Matthew would too, so in my half conscious state I remember wondering who she was talking to, lol. I was confused as to why she was trying to tell me about having a blond baby. But sure enough, she was talking to me and I finally got to see my sweet little blond boy.

Matthew has been a joy in our family since he arrived. He's super laid back and has always been such an easy child. When he was little we used to call him the shadow because he followed Josh around everywhere he went. Josh and Matthew are still really close and I love that they're such good friends.

Matthew has always been a really smart child. He taught himself to read at three and at four he memorized all the planets in the solar system in order and could tell you all sorts of amazing facts about them. He likes to read non-fiction books about different topics and he knows all sorts of interesting facts about random things. Matthew is the only kid I know who is genuinely dissapointed when his teacher doesn't hand out homework. In the summer he begs me to print out homework sheets for him to work on and he can't wait for school to start in the fall. Matthew is funny and sweet and a blessing in our lives.

In honor of Matthew's birthday, here is a video I made when he was a baby. I love to watch this every year on his birthday. Happy birthday sweet Matthew! :)

Summer

2011-08-14T23:48:00.000-06:00

Wow, it's been a while since I've updated my blog. I'm not really sure if anyone is still even reading it, but if so, hello! I'm back! :)

It's been a crazy busy summer here. I've enjoyed having the boys home all summer but I'm looking forward to getting the house back in order when school starts in a few weeks. We spent all day yesterday going through the kids clothes, figuring out what still fits, what Josh could hand down to Matthew, what we could donate and what needs to be purchased for the school year. I discovered that we all have way too many clothes and I was happy to haul three garbage bags full of them out of the house to donate and we took three more totes to our favorite consignment shop for store credit. It feels good to get it all organized.

I took Josh shopping a few days ago for school supplies and we had a good time getting him ready to start middle school. I'm still having a hard time with this whole middle school thing. It's occuring to me more and more that he's not a little kid anymore and he just keeps getting bigger! I'm going to have a teenager in the house before I know it. That's scary!

One fun project we've been working on this summer is putting together a backyard theater!! I found a great video projector on Craigslist and we're working on building a movie screen. We've actually already had one backyard movie night to test out the projector and we just watched it on a sheet tacked to our fence. We had a fun time and I think it will be even more fun when the big screen is ready! Next summer I'm hoping to have weekly movie nights with our friends and neighbors. My next Craigslist search is for a real movie theater popcorn popper that I can set up on the patio. I haven't found one in my budget yet, but I'm keeping an eye out!

So that's all the fun stuff going on here these days. It's been a fun summer full of swimming lessons, hanging out with friends, a trip to Yellowstone, backyard movies and getting ready for the new school year.

Now for the other subject that I've been debating with myself if I should post about or not. I'm pretty open about most things on my blog. We all know how much I like to ramble on about my life. :) So I decided to post about a new journey in my life in hopes that it might help someone struggling with the same issues.

This year has been full of fun things and great family moments, but in a lot of ways it's been a hard year for me. I've struggled for years with anxiety and it has come back full force lately for some reason. I feel like I'm struggling to keep control of my life lately. I did my 30 days to a better me project, I've been working on making positive changes but I'm just going through one of those periods where I feel like despite my best efforts life keeps getting in the way and I'm not the person I want to be these days. My anxiety makes it hard to function at times. I went through something similar about four years ago and I went on medication and eventually got things under control but now it's back and to make a very long story short, I'm tired of the medication and I'm tired of the anxiety. It's overwhelming and I've reached the end of my rope.

So after much prayer and a talk with my doctor, I've found a great psychologist and this Wednesday I'm starting therapy. I'll be going once a week for the time being. Honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I'm going to therapy. I don't know why. I guess I don't like to admit weakness. But on the other hand, it's important to me to take control of my life and be the best me I can be and if this is what I need to be that person then I'm excited to start the journey. There are a few things I need to work through and I think this will be really good for me. Maybe this will be a six months to a better me project. I'm looking forward to learning and growing and coming out stronger on the other side.

So I'll probably update on my progress as I go. My blog has kind of reinvented itself a few times and I guess for now it's my ongoing quest to become a better me. That seems to be the theme of my life this year, so I guess it will be the theme of my blog for a while. Stick with me, you never know what will happen next. :)

Home again!

2011-07-21T15:20:00.000-06:00

I didn't mention it before we left, but we went out of town for a few days and we got back last night. The boys had cousins camp at my moms house, which is four hours from here, so Shawn drove them there on Wednesday, came back on Thursday, we spent a few quiet days here with just Clarissa and then when it was time to go pick them up on Saturday we all went and stayed at my moms house for a few days longer. I really needed to get out of the house for a few days so it was a good excuse to take a mini vacation.

I grew up two hours from Yellowstone Park and it was one of my favorite places to go as a kid. We decided while we were staying with my mom that we would take a few day trips and take the kids to Yellowstone and to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is also about a two hour drive from my hometown. Shawn and I grew up in the same area and both spent our summers going to Yellowstone and Jackson as kids and we both feel sad every summer that we can't take our kids there any time we want to because it's too far away from where we live now. We live four hours from my hometown and Yellowstone is two hours past that. It's a doable trip if we plan ahead, but not as a quick daytrip like we used to be able to take as kids. We both get really excited any time we have the opportunity to go there.

We did have a good time! It's an absolutely gorgeous drive through the Tetons. I love being up in the mountains. It makes me happy and reminds me of being a kid. We used to go camping near Yellowstone when I was a kid and I have happy memories of those times. In the past few days we saw lots of wild animals, watched Old Faithful erupt, took a ride on a stage coach, visited a bear habitat, fed some ducks, drove through beautiful scenery...we pretty much wore ourselves out. All in all it was a sucessful trip.

But going back to my hometown is always a little bittersweet for me. I miss it so much. Every time I go back I feel like I'm home and I always hate leaving. I miss my hometown. I miss living there. I miss the life I had there. I miss the farmland and the potato fields and the open space. I just feel like I belong there. It fits me.

But there are also some things that I don't like to confront when I'm there and they are the reasons we don't live there. There are some things I left there that prefer to stay there. There is a complicated family situation there and there are memories of things there that I'd rather forget. We live four hours away for a reason. It's better for me to keep a little distance.

But while I visit I'm happy. I'm happy taking my kids all the places that my parents used to take me as a kid. I feel like every inch of that town holds a memory and I like sharing those memories with my kids. We fed the ducks where I used to love to feed ducks as a kid. We drove past the house I grew up in and snuck on to the driveway and tried to see if we could still see my name written in the cement under the basketball hoop. (We couldn't. The grass has grown around it and I didn't want to dig through it and have the people that own the house come out and ask us what the heck we were doing.) We showed the kids where Shawn and I used to live in apartments next door to each other when we were dating and we showed them the spot where he proposed.

When I was growing up in that town I couldn't wait to leave. I had big dreams of moving across the country to New York City and seeing the world. When I was 19 I did move across the country to a town right outside of New York City. I was glad to be away from my hometown. But after a year of seeing the world I was happy to go back home. I realized what a great place it had been to grow up.

On Tuesday we stopped by Kmart, just down the street from the house I grew up in, and when we were checking out Josh told the checkout girl that I had grown up there but now we lived in a different town. The checkout girl, who looked to be about 18, rolled her eyes and said that she'd move away too. I just chuckled. I would have said the same thing at her age.

Yesterday we came home and today it's business as usual around here. I've got projects to do, kids to chase around and a house to clean. Life goes on, but it was nice to take a break for a bit.

Photo Friday

2011-07-08T23:13:00.000-06:00

The weather was so perfect this evening that I decided to try some more pictures of the kids. The spot that I was planning on taking them at didn't work out so we had to find a plan B at the last minute before the sun went down, but I think it worked out pretty well. I haven't had a change to go through them all yet but here are some that I liked!

Fourth of July part 2

2011-07-04T21:22:00.001-06:00

After spending a fun morning at the zoo we spent the afternoon in the backyard! We got out the kiddie pool, the sprinklers and the slip and slide and the kids (and Shawn!) had a great time playing in the water.

Sadly, our air conditioning choose this weekend to stop working, so it's about a million degrees in our house right now. We ended up spending most of the afternoon outside because with the shade on the back porch and the breeze I think it is actually cooler outside than it is inside. Playing in the sprinklers is a great cure for a broken air conditioner! Hopefully we can get someone over here tomorrow to fix it.

After some fun time in the water we had a yummy BBQ with hamburgers, corn on the cob, pasta salad, Raspberry lemonade and ice cream for desert. Yum!

Now we're all hanging out in the basement since it's the only cool place in the house. Thank goodness for the basement. We're all sleeping down here tonight. The kids think it's a big treat to sleep in the basement!

Here are some pictures I took of the water fun!

Butterflies!

2011-07-04T15:25:00.000-06:00

This morning we took the kids to the zoo. They have a butterfly exhibit here this summer that I've been super excited about! They did it a few years ago and I had a ball taking pictures of the butterflies.

I love butterflies. I think they're beautiful. It's normally so hard to get pictures of them because they move so fast and they can be hard to find, so when there are 400 of them flying around in an enclosed space and I get the opportunity to spend the morning chasing after them with my camera I'm all over it! That's like the perfect day to me!

Shawn took the kids to see another part of the zoo while I stayed in the butterfly enclosure for a while. I took over 800 pictures and I could happily have taken 800 more if I had the time. I envy the people that work ther and get to spend hours a day in there! I'm always telling Shawn that I need to get a job at the zoo. :)

Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took. There are a million more that I love but I'm still going through them. I may post more later.

For now I think we're going to take the kids to the park and then have a BBQ in the backyard this evening. I love the fourth of July! :)

More pictures to come!

More pictures!

2011-07-02T22:06:00.000-06:00

Today I had big plans to go out and do another photo shoot with the kids. I spent forever picking out coordinating clothes, got all my equipment ready and we drove to one of our favorite picture spots, and then things didn't really go all that well. It was really hot outside, for one thing, so we were all kind of miserable. Even the boys, who are usually really patient with my photo shoots, were kind of grumpy. I also struggled with the lighting and with Clarissa, who pretty much hates having her picture taken even on a good day.

In the end I got a couple of that I like well enough to share but none that I'm completely in love with. My plan is to go back out tomorrow or Monday and give it another try, so I might be back with more in a few days!

Another picture!

2011-07-01T09:47:00.000-06:00

I've been taking pictures this week! A couple of nights ago I had an idea for a photo shoot and it didn't work out like I hoped but I did get a picture I liked out of it.

My plan was to do some taekwondo silhouette of the boys. I used to LOVE to do silhouettes and I've gotten some really cool ones in the past but it's been a long time since I tried it so I wanted to give it another try. It was a last minute plan and not thought out very well though, so it didn't really work. I took the kids up to my favorite spot on top of a big hill where I can shoot against the sky, but it was too cloudy and by the time we got there the sun was setting too low and it was too late to get good shots. Shooting sillhouttes requires some advanced planning because you need a certain type of light and a clear sky.

Anyway, it didn't work, but when I got home I pulled up this shot and kind of liked it so I thought I'd share. It's not a sillhoutte, but I love the sunburst and the way he's standing. I'm going to try to go back up there this weekend and give sillhouttes another try. I also have plans for another photoshoot this weekend too if I get the chance to do it. We're still making our 4th of July plans.

So here's the picture. Check back later this weekend and I may have more!

Summer cuteness!

2011-06-29T18:00:00.000-06:00

Achoo!

2011-06-27T11:18:00.000-06:00

Well, the third annual cabin trip adventure came to an end and we're back home now. The weekend went by SO fast! We had a lot of fun, I think everyone was sad to leave. Every time we get together the adults play Speed Scrabble and I seriously LOVE that game. Saturday night we were all super tired and hopped up on all the junk food we were consuming and the game got pretty silly. I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. Good times. :)

The only problem with me going up to the mountains and getting some fresh mountain air is that I'm allergic to fresh mountain air. I've been sneezing for three days and my asthma is terrible. I thought it would get better when we came home but this morning I woke up and my eyes were swelling shut and I can't breathe. I don't know what it is that is bothering my allergies so much but I'm pretty miserable. I took some Benedryl earlier, which I try not to do unless I'm desperate because it makes me SUPER sleepy and spaced out, but I was pretty desperate. So now Josh is babysitting Clarissa downstairs while I rest for a little bit. I can breathe better now and my eyes aren't itchy and watery, but now my brain is only half functioning. I'm not really sure why I chose to blog in the middle of it. I wonder if this post will make any sense when the medine fog lifts.

The other thing I've been doing today that I shouldn't be doing in a medicine induced haze is trying to find some more information on our stupid tax return. We finally qualified for the adoption tax credit this year and of course this is the year the IRS has decided to be difficult about it. We filed our taxes in February and still haven't gotten our refund. The IRS has flagged all the adoption tax credits for review and they're making everyone submit a bunch of extra info and they're taking their own sweet time reviewing all of it. I called today to see if I could get a status update and they told me that nothing was new and to call back in August. I'm kind of cranky about it. I suppose it's a good thing that the government is making sure that no one is trying to scam them out of fake adoption tax credits, but mine is legitimate, I swear! I'm hoping that they were just being conservative and we hear something before August.

Ok, so now I'm going to go lay down and try to get over this medicine haze. I feel kind of crappy. :( I look forward to reading this post when I'm lucid, lol.

At the cabin

2011-06-24T22:18:00.000-06:00

I'm writing on my iPad from a cabin in the woods! We're up here for our third annual cabin weekend with friends. We come up here every June with the two families we're close friends with and we spend the weekend letting the kids run around, riding ATV's, having sling shot competitions, eating way too much junk food, playing lots of games and laughing til our stomachs hurt. I look forward this weekend all year.

I absolutely love these friends. They're like family to me. Our kids are all the same age, our husbands are friends and the women are like sisters to me. We celebrate holidays and special events together and support each other through whatever is going on in our lives. I feel really grateful for those friendships.

Ok, so I had to take a break from writing for a moment for some bat excitement! When we got here this evening there was some sort of animal poop on the floor that we thought was from a mouse. Then as we were getting kids to bed we started hearing squeaking noises in the ceiling where a pipe goes out from the fireplace. Suddenly on the outside of the house we see bats start flying out from a little hole in the roof. We went outside and saw at least 10 of them! A couple of them flew right over our heads! We all stood on the deck and watched them flying around as the sun set. It was kind of awesome. :)

Anyway, we've only been here for a few hours but we're having a really great time. It's good to get away from life for a bit and come up here and relax. Tomorrow the girls are taking a little shopping trip into town. And by town I mean the three little stores out here in the middle of nowhere.:) There is a great used bookstore here that I love. I like to collect books from my childhood. Not new reprints but actual old copies. The more used the better. Hopefully I'll find a few gems tomorrow!

For I'm going to try to get Clarissa to sleep, do a little more bat watching and then the adults are having a game tournament when the kids are asleep. Shawn and I have go defend our title as Speed Scrabble champions! :)

Growing up

2011-06-22T22:40:00.000-06:00

Summer is in full swing at our house! It's been like Grand Central Station around here today! The boys friends have been coming over and there have been kids in and out of here all day.

Josh just turned 11 but some of his friends are 12. He has one friend who lives just a few streets over from us but they don't go to the same school and we were so busy during the school year that we didn't see him for a while. He used to be a really hyperactive little kid who kind of drove me nuts, lol. It's probably been at least six months or so since I've seen him. A few weeks ago he called to talk to Josh and his voice was so deep that I thought it was his dad on the phone. Then he stopped by today to see if Josh could come over and when I opened the door my jaw almost hit the floor, lol. That hyper active little kid has suddenly turned into a tall, calm, deep voiced teenager! I barely recognized him, he's like a completely different person! I talked to him for a minute about school and he just seems so grown up. I'm used to little kids coming over to play with my kids, not kids who are pratically as tall as me and sound like adults!

So it has suddenly occured to me that Josh is on the verge of that same transformation and it's freaking me out a bit! He starts middle school in the fall. In my mind he's still the same kid I sent off to Kindergarten (which seems like it was last week) but I think today I had a moment of shock when I realized that he's not really a little boy anymore. I don't think I like that! If anyone has figured out how to keep their kids sweet and little forever, let me know. :)

And with that I will leave you with a picture of someone else who is growing up way too fast. Clarissa is obsessed with changing her clothes. She takes her clothes off and puts them back on all day long. She's amazingly good at dressing herself for her age. She can even get strappy sandals on by herself. That's handy sometimes but when she constantly wants to take her clothes off and put something else one it drives me a little crazy. Anyway, here's what she managed to dress herself in today. I think she has a very high society, Paris Hilton look on her face. It makes me laugh. I love that kid!

Happy Fathers Day!

2011-06-19T17:16:00.000-06:00

Today is significant for two reasons. First it's Fathers Day and second, it's the two year anniversary of Clarissa's referral! Can you believe it's been two years?! Two years ago right this minute I was in the car on the way to Portland staring at the picture of a beautiful baby girl on my Blackberry and reading everyone's comments on my big announcement blog post.

I remember being SO excited that day but also scared out of my mind! Suddenly the baby we had talked about for so long was actually real and it freaked me out a little, lol! I didn't know then what the future would hold but now that sweet Clarissa is part of our family I laugh that I ever worried. She's more wonderful than we could possibly have hoped for. She makes me smile every day and she pretty much has us all wrapped around her little finger. :)

We've had a good Father's Day so far. Hopefully Shawn is having a good day! For gifts I bought him a nice case for his iPod and the kids and I made him a Star Wars candy pack that I found on a really creative blog.
Shawn's favorite summertime activity is taking drives up in the mountains so this afternoon we jumped in the car and took a drive. We love being up in the mountains. I'm kicking myself that I forgot to take my camera because we saw a huge owl in a tree on the way back and he was in the perfect spot for picture taking. I always see the best wildlife when I don't have my camera!

Tonight we're getting Michael packed up and early tomorrow morning we're driving him to the airport to see him off to Korea. I think he's had a good time here, but honestly, it's kind of been a long month. We had a bit of a different experience this time than we did with Melissa. We've kept him busy with fun activities and it's been fine, but we've struggled a bit with him at times. I think everyone is ready for this adventure to come to an end. He's a sweet kid and I wish him well. We're on to new adventures.

Tomorrow is the first official day of summer vacation for my kids. I hope I can find some fun activities to keep them busy this summer. They have lots of friends in the neighborhood to play with so I think we're mostly going to stick close to home this summer. I wish we were planning a big exciting summer vacation but for various reasons I don't think it's in the cards this summer.

For now I'm off to make another sweep of the house and gather up Michael's things and get him packed up. I think it's anxious to get home. I hope he has lots of fun stories to tell when he gets there!

The apron

2011-06-18T20:24:00.000-06:00

I got a package in the mail today from my mom. I opened it and it's a super cute apron made from red, white and blue 4th of July fabric. It was just an apron but it felt like a little piece of home as soon as I saw it and I can't stop looking at it and smiling.

I always get really homesick around the 4th of July every year. I LOVED July fourth growing up. It was one of my very favorite days of the year. We did the same thing every single year. My dad would get up at the crack of dawn and drive downtown to save us the same spot along the parade route. I loved the 4th of July parade in our town. I grew up in a fairly small town and we had a typical small town fouth of July parade. High School marching bands, floats from local churches and businesses, ect. We always sat in the same spot and watched the same parade every fourth of July that I can remember. I loved it.

In the afternoon we would go on a picnic or do some fun family activity and then in the evening there would be an awesome fireworks display over the river and then we would come home and do more fireworks in our backyard where my sister and I would huddle on the back porch and worry that my dad was going to start the yard on fire, lol. It was literally the exact same thing every single year. There was something comforting about the fact that life never changed much when I was growing up. I loved it.

Then I grew up, my dad passed away, my mom got remarried, I moved away from my hometown and everything is different now. I guess when I was growing up I thought that somehow things were going to stay the same forever. I couldn't imagine that there would be a day when I wouldn't be sitting on that curb watching the fourth of July parade with my dad. Obviously that is silly and unrealistic but it still threw me for a loop the first year that the fourth of July changed and I wasn't in my hometown, sitting on that curb with my dad watching the parade and looking forward to the fireworks. To this day I still ache for home every fourth of July. I get incredibly homesick on the fourth of July. We do our own fun family activities on the fourth, and I love spending that time with my husband and kids, but every year I have that same twinge of sadness when I think of how much I miss my dad and my hometown and my family the way it used to be before everything changed. My family has become much more complicated in recent years. Even when we get together, which isn't often, nothing is the same anymore and it's something I really struggle with.

So today I opened the package and out fell that apron. Homemade aprons remind me of my mom and my grandma and they remind me of home. I think I'm just extra hormonal today but I just wanted to wrap myself up in that apron and be transported back to my childhood. I've been sitting here looking at it and folding and unfolding it since it came. It feels like home to me. I'm grateful that my mom thought to send it to me. My mom loves to sew and probably made several aprons to give to her kids. It wasn't a particularly significant gift but it today it feels significant to me. Today it was a cure for the homesickness that I know is coming up as we get closer to the fourth. When I feel a little sad on the fouth and think of home I'll put my apron on, fire up the grill in the backyard and feel grateful for the wonderful memories I have of my childhood and for the opportunities I have to make new memories with my kids.

Dreams

2011-06-14T15:27:00.000-06:00

I had a weird dream about the past last night that has been on my mind all day. I have really vivid dreams for some reason, and sometimes it's hard for me to shake them. I've kind of been in my head all day and I'm driving myself crazy so I thought I'd come blog and get my mind on a different track.

I don't really have anything specific to blog about. Things are pretty much the same around here. I'm doing great with water aerobics this week. I've managed to make it two days in a row, which is sometimes a feat. As of today I've officially been on Weight Watchers for a week. So far so good! The extra points I get for water aerobics help. I like Weight Watchers. As much as anyone can like dieting, I suppose.

Clarissa has been particularly cute and funny this week. Seriously, I've got to get that kid on video and post it because she is hysterically funny. I love two year olds because they always say the cutest things. She was coloring a picture of an octopus yesterday and trying SO hard to pronounce the word octopus. No matter how hard she tried it kept coming out "applesauce", lol. She colored an awesome picture of an applesauce. :)

She's also become obsessed with a certain pair of her pajamas (the plaid pajamas from our family Christmas picture, if you remember those). She begs to wear them all day long. I don't let her spend the day in her pajamas but it doesn't stop her from asking repeatedly. I get her dressed in the morning and we go to the gym and as soon as we get home she takes her shirt and pants off and asks for her pajamas. When I don't let her put them on she just decides to go without clothes and I can't get her back in her regular clothes. The last two days she has come up with a "brilliant" plan and she tells me that it's bedtime several times during the day. She knows she gets to put her pajamas on when she goes to bed so she'll randomly ask to go to bed at various points during the day. Nice try. :) Occasionally we do have a pajama day. It makes her happy! She'd pretty much live in them 24/7 if I let her.

The other day I ordered a Disney movie on my Amazon account for a friend and I left my Ipad sitting on the couch with the Amazon page still loaded. A while later I checked my e-mail and Clarissa had used the one click ordering button and had ordered Tangled and The Princess and the Frog on Blu-ray! Thank goodness I caught it quick enough to cancel it. You have to stay on your toes around her. :)

We're trying to work on potty training her but it's been slow going so far. She's not showing a lot of interest. Every now and then she'll ask to sit on the potty and I sit her on it and make a big fuss about what a big girl she is but then nothing happens and she eventually gets bored and wants off. I think once Michael goes home next week and things settle down a bit around here I'm going to start working harder at it. My boys were both nightmares to potty train and I'm hoping and praying that we have an easier time with Clarissa!

That's pretty much all that is going on here right now. The house is quiet and I'm going go to take advantage of the last quiet half hour of my day and get some stuff done before Clarissa wakes up and the boys come home. There's never a dull moment around here!

Sunday

2011-06-12T08:23:00.000-06:00

I know I said I wasn't going to obsess over the scale but I just checked and I've lost 2.8 pounds since I started Weight Watchers on Tuesday! YAY! :) Between Weight Watchers and water aerobics I'm feeling really good and I'm excited about seeing some positive changes in my body. Pretty soon I might be able to get down the box of jeans in my closet that don't currently fit! When I can get myself into a pair of those I'm going to throw myself a little party. :)

We've been pretty busy here this week. I've been working on some projects for church, the kids have all sorts of fun end of the school year parties going on and we've been finding some fun things to entertain Michael. The kids are out of school for the year this Friday and then Michael goes home the following Monday. We've had a good time with Michael but I think I can see the kids starting to wear down. It's fun having a house guest for a while but I think it will be nice when things go back to normal around here. It's been a really chaotic month.

The weekend after Michael goes home we're headed up to a friends cabin for our yearly cabin trip, which I'm so excited about! This will be our third year doing it. It's us and two other families and we always have a really great time. I can hardly believe that it's already been a year since the last time we went! It's something we all really look forward to all year.

I'm looking forward to the kids being out of school and doing some fun summer activities. Usually our summers are packed with a million things but we really don't have a lot of big plans for this summer yet. The boys have cousins camp at my moms house for a few days and that's pretty much it. We keep talking about taking a vacation but for various reasons I'm not sure if that's going to happen this year. We'll probably do something to get away for a few days but I don't think we'll be doing anything too big. I'm looking forward to doing things close to home, like spending Saturdays at the lake and putting a pool up in the backyard.

Well, that's pretty much the update from our house. It's time for me to go get myself ready for church and eat my Weight Watchers friendly breakfast. I lost 2.8 pounds! Yay me! :)

The scale

2011-06-07T20:08:00.000-06:00

The quest for a better me continues. I decided that the comments from my previous post were right. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. I'm continuing on with my better me project, but I'm taking it slower for now so I don't overwhelm myself with making a million goals that I don't have the time to accomplish right now.

My latest quest is something I've been avoiding but decided it was time to do. I joined Weight Watchers. *Sigh* In my mind I'm still a super tall and super skinny 16 year old. Unfortunately the mirror and and the scale keep reminding me otherwise.

I'm an emotional eater. When I'm stressed out I eat. When I stepped on the scale this week I kind of wanted to cry. Usually when I want to cry I eat, but not this time! On my quest to be a better me I decided not to accept the number on the scale and I'm doing something about it. I don't have a ton of weight to lose but enough that I need to do something about it before it's even more out of control than it already is.

So that brings me to Weight Watchers. I did it years ago after Matthew was born to lose the baby weight and it worked really well for me. I don't mind counting the points and I do feel like it's a healthy and realistic way to lose weight. Weight Watchers has an iPad app and I'm pretty attached to my iPad so that makes it easier. Whatever it is, if it has an iPad app, I'm totally in, lol.

Going on a diet is like going back to the gym. The first few weeks are really hard and you have to sort of force yourself but then once it becomes a habit it's not so bad. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I just have to get past the first few weeks.

So that's where I'm at right now. I'm counting points and trying to ignore my scale for the time being. I decided not to make any weight loss goals or obsess over the number on the scale. It's all about becoming a better me for the long run. There's no deadline and no goal. The goal is to just move forward and do better than I was doing yesterday. If as a result I become healthier and happier and my pants fit better, then good for me. :) I'll keep you posted!

A better me?

2011-06-02T18:56:00.000-06:00

Well, my "30 Days To a Better Me" project is over. Am I a better me? Hmm...sadly I'm not sure if I can say yes. It was honestly kind of a tough month for me. The first half went smoothly but the second half has been really chaotic and stressful and at the moment I'm not the calm and peaceful person I was hoping I would be!

I did learn a lot about myself this month though. One thing I learned is that you should never have a long term houseguest or take on another child in the middle of a destressing program, lol. Michael is having a good time here, but having a forth child in the house really isn't helping my stress levels. There is more laundry to do, more food to make, more messes to clean up and one more kid to entertain. That along with the fact that my kids have a million end of the school year projects and activities and parties going on means that life is just super chaotic at the moment. I feel like I'm kind of treading water at the moment and trying to not to drown.

One thing I learned about myself is that water aerobics does wonders for my stress levels, but so far this week I haven't managed to make it to class once. Monday I actually went and I was told that there was going to be a class even though it was a holiday but when I got over there I found out that they were wrong and there was no class. I did exercise in the water a bit by myself though, so maybe that sort of counts. Tuesday the kids missed the bus so I was too late to make it to class. Wednesday I missed it because Matthew had to make a rainforest diarama and it would have been crushed on the bus so I had to drive the kids to school. Today I was bound and determined to go and Shawn even got all the kids lunches made and got Clarissa ready this morning so I wouldn't be late, which was really sweet. I did actually manage to make it there but when I dropped Clarissa off at child care she had a complete meltdown and wouldn't go in. I tried everything to get her to stay but it was no use. We finally gave up and left.

Tomorrow Shawn has the day off so I'm going no matter what. He's actually planning to use a guest pass and come with me, which will be fun. Shawn is actually the best stress reliever of all. I'm always happier when he's around.

One thing I did rediscover this month was my love of photography, although I have put that back on hold a little since Michael has been here. I did really enjoy the photo challenge when I had time to do it. Once Michael goes home I'm going to get back into it again. Now that it's finally getting warm outside it's the perfect time for me to start taking more pictures. I do have plans for some photo projects this summer. Rediscovering photography was probably the best thing that came out of my 30 day project.

Even though the rest of the month didn't go like I planned, joining the gym and rediscovering photography are positive changes that will continue to benefit me. I may still be a little high strung and stressed out, but at least I'm moving towards making changes, and that's a good thing, right?!

Once the kids are out of school and Michael goes home, I think I'll revisit my 30 day project. I may break it down and set some 7 day goals and take it a week at a time for a bit.

For now I'm going to snuggle up with Shawn and see if we can catch up on Army Wives while the kids play. The perfect end to a busy day. :)

Tuesday

2011-05-31T15:03:00.000-06:00

I almost wrote Monday. My brain is having a hard time comprehending that it's Tuesday because everyone was home yesterday.

So here is how my morning went. I got up to kids running crazy through the house, hurried and got dressed for the gym, made sure everyone was eating breakfast, made everyone's lunches, realized that I was out of shampoo and conditioner in my gym bag so I refilled my litte bottles, wrangled Clarissa and managed to pin her down to do her hair while trying to sign the kids homework, told the boys to get their shoes on about 40 times while frantically searching for Clarissa's shoes, packed Clarissa's diaper bag for the gym, realized that that we were totally late, pushed everyone out the door into the car, while carrying Clarissa, my gym bag and the diaper bag, drove them to the bus stop just in time to watch the bus pull away, at which point I realized that there was no way I was going to make it to the gym in time for water aerobics since I now had to drive them to school, so I drove behind the bus through road construction to get the kids to school, and then drove home, tried to get Clarissa out of the van with the gym bag and the diaper bag, which apparently offended her somehow (I think she wanted to get out of her carseat by herself and I picked her up, which made her mad), so then I had her throwing a full blown tantrum in the garage while I tried to get her, the diaper bag and the gym bag into the house, at which point I realized that the garage door into the house was jammed (it sometimes does that and it feels like it's locked for some reason even though it's not) and I didn't have my house key to get in the front door, so I said lots of naughty words to the door while Clarissa sat on the floor of the garage and cried until I finally pried the door open and we went inside. I tossed my gym bag in the laundry room, hung the diaper bag on the hook, let Clarissa finish her tantrum and sat on the couch and contimplated going back to bed and starting over.

Awesome morning.

Unfortunately going back to bed wasn't really an option so I cheered Clarissa up and we sat on the couch and watched Sesame Street instead of going to the gym. I'm bummed that I missed water aerobics today. The crazy Molly Shannon lady teaches on Tuesday.

Fortunately my day has gotten slightly better since then. Shawn came home for lunch and brought me a yummy salad, which was nice. Now Clarissa is taking a nap and I'm sitting here listening to the Wicked soundtrack and enjoying a quiet house for a little bit before the boys come home.

We did have a fun day yesterday. We took the kids to the zoo for a while until it started to rain and then Shawn took the boys to Kung Fu Panda 2, which they really enjoyed. We were hoping to spend some more time outside but the weather just didn't cooperate. I think the kids had fun anyway though. Michael asked if he could call his mom last night to tell her about his day, so he must have had a good time.

This morning Clarissa got frustrated by something and she threw her hands up and said "Oh, geez!" lol! It sounded so funny coming out of her mouth. She's such a parrot. She's finally starting to speak in longer sentences now and I just love talking to her. She's really funny.

So there's my update for the day. I'm going to go paint my toenails and bask in the peace and quiet a bit longer before the kids get home. And tomorrow morning I'm going to make it to the gym if it kills me!

Saturday

2011-05-28T20:42:00.000-06:00

Shawn just took the kids to an activity center to run off some energy and I stayed home to work on some church stuff I need to do. Only I opened my computer to work on it and got sidetracked and now I'm blogging instead.

Speaking of church, I was recently asked to serve as the secretary in our church Young Womens organization, which I'm really excited about. Everyone in our church is asked to volunteer in some capacity and they switch it around every now and then. I've been working in our church nursery and now I'll be working with the teenage girls. I'm really excited about it! I was active in the program when I was a teenager and it's fun to be a part of it again. I'm supposed to be sitting her putting a calendar of activities and a birthday list together, but my blog was calling me. :)

I actually don't really have anything specific to blog about. When the house is quiet and peaceful like it is now it puts me in the mood to write but at the moment I can't think of a topic. Nothing is new since I last blogged except that I went to the mall last night and bought new plates.

We've had the same dinner plates for years. Like a ridiculous number of years. I'm pretty sure they're older than Matthew. The other day I was noticing that they're starting to chip, we're always running out of bowls because some off them have broken and last night I decided that it was time to go buy new plates.

For some dumb reason Shawn and I decided to take all the kids to the mall to help me pick out plates at Dillards. Four bored kids in the breakable section of a department store for an hour? Sure, that's a great idea! Sometimes Shawn and I are dumb. :) Fortunately all the breakables survived and we picked out some really great plates.

Our old plates looked like this:

They were totally my style 10 years ago when our old house had more of a country theme. I don't particularly like them anymore and they don't really match my style or my current house at all. I've been meaning to get new plates for a long time I just never got around to it.

Our new plates look like this:

I couldn't decide on a color so I got both of them. I really love them. I loved opening my cupboard this morning and seeing new plates in it. I think they will serve us well for quite a while. They'd better because at the rate I replace my plates it's going to be a long time before I think about getting new ones.

Let's see, what else is new around here? Things are still going pretty good with our exchange student. He's a busy, energetic kid so he's keeping me on my toes, but the kids are having a really good time with him. He had quite a Wii tournament with Matthew today.

Shawn doesn't have to work Monday because of the holiday so we're hoping to take the kids out and do something fun for the day. I'd really like to drive up into the mountains but the weather hasn't really been cooperative lately and we don't really want to go up there in rain. We may have to find some indoor activities to do until the weather improves. It's been such a cold, wet spring here. I usually love rain but I think we're all ready for a little sunshine.

Well, I've failed to come up with anything too exciting to blog about so I think it's time to wrap it up and go to my church projects. I've got to take advantage of the quiet house while I can!

Well hello ab muscles!

2011-05-26T18:47:00.000-06:00

I went to the gym this morning, worked my butt off at water aerobics, came home, sat down on the couch for 20 minutes to read with Clarissa, got up to answer the phone and my ab muscles hurt so bad I could barely stand up! My first thought was "OUCH!!" and my second thought was "YAY!"! :) There's some pleasure in coming home from the gym and feeling sore muscles. It makes me feel like all the work is getting me somewhere. It motivates me to keep going. We had the crazy Molly Shannon teacher today. She makes me laugh. I always look forward to her classes!

My other exciting news today is that this morning Josh was awarded a presidential academic acheivement award! They had a little awards ceremony this morning and he got a pin and certificate and a letter signed by the president. (Well, OK, not an actual ink signature, but still.) I'm so proud of him, that kid never ceases to amaze me. He's awesome and I'm lucky to be his mom. I'm having a hard time with the fact that he's now down to his last few weeks of elementary school. He starts middle school in the fall and it's still totally freaking me out. They really do grow up way too fast.

I'm trying to think of something else to write about, but that's pretty much all I have to say and all the time I have to say it! I'm off to get the kids some dinner and then I think we're going to have a movie night. Shawn has a chuch meeting to go to and I need a little peace and quiet around here. Let's hope a movie and some popcorn does the trick! :)

La Vida Loca

2011-05-24T21:57:00.000-06:00

Remember at the beginning of the month when I said I was going to post a photo a day for about 18 days? Boy did I do a great job accomplishing that little project! Those were 18 exciting days, weren't they?!

Ok fine, it was supposed to be 30 days and I kind of suck. I was having so much fun with it at first and then life sort of got away from me the second half of the month. I'm notorious for starting projects and never finishing them. It's a sickness. :)

I was doing really great on my "30 days to a better me" project until all the kids got sick and then they got better just in time for our exchange student to get here and life sort of got a little crazy. I'm getting back on track, I just took a little detour.

Life with our exchange student Michael is going pretty good, but it was an adjustment for the first couple of days. He had a really hard time adjusting to the time change at first and he didn't sleep at all the first night he was here. It was kind of a rough night. He's adjusted better now though and he's sleeping OK.

He gets along well with Josh and Matthew and they're having a good time. It's always an ajustment having someone else living in your family though. It has thrown off our routine a bit, which is an adjustment for me because I'm such a creature of habit. It has taken a few days to get Michael into the routine and to get used to how we function. It's only one more kid in the house but it feels like 50 times more work. Not in a bad way, I'm just really busy and life is more hectic. My kids are more wound up and hyper with a friend in the house and it feels like one big party to them, so getting them to focus and get homework done, practice taekwondo and do the other things that we routinely do around here has been harder. Keeping Michael entertained while trying to keep our schedule on track has been trickier than I thought it would be. He seems to be having a good time though. He's making lots of friends at school from what I can tell. Josh says that he's really good at soccer so all the boys want him to play soccer with him at recess.

One thing I've been amazed about is how well he's adapted to American food. When Melissa was here I had a hard time knowing what to feed her at first because our food was so unfamiliar and different to her. I ended up going to the Korean market and buying her some kimchee and other Korean foods to help get her through. Michael has loved every thing we've fed him and doesn't seem to want Korean food at all. In fact he said he doesn't really like kimchee or spicy food, which boggles my mind. I didn't think there was such thing as a Korean who doesn't like spicy food or kimchee, lol! How does he survive in the land of red pepper paste and kimchee with every meal? I don't know, but he seems to like our bland American food. I'm having no problem keeping him fed!

Today was my first day back at water aerobics. I had to take all last week off because of sick kids and I took yesterday off so I could get Michael settled in at school. I was happy to be back today, I really look forward to going. It's amazing what a stress reliever it is for me. I really should have signed up for the gym a long time ago.

All in all, life is going good these days I'm just really busy and trying to keep up! I may or may not finish out my 30 day photo challenge. The last week has been really crazy and busy and by the time the evening rolls around I'm too tired to come up with something creative. Now that things are settling down a bit with Michael I may have time to get back to it. We'll see. If not I'll pick it back up after Michael leaves.

For now I'm going to get the kids in bed and then crawl into my own bed and get some much needed sleep. Tomorrow is another busy day!

Ahnyoung!

2011-05-21T23:37:00.001-06:00

This evening we picked up our Korean exchange student! All the kids in the exchange program choose American names to go by while they're here and he has chosen to go by Michael. He's 12 years old and in Korea he's in the 6th grade but they always move the kids down a grade while they're in the US so he'll be attending 5th grade with Josh while he's here.

We picked him up at the airport around 7:00 this evening and the whole time we were in the car on the way home he kept telling me excitedly that he had presents for our family. As soon as we walked in the door he immediately opened his suitcase and started pulling out gifts. Holy cow, it was like Korean Christmas at our house! I think his mom sent every souvineer in the entire country in his suitcase, lol. He gave the boys really cool t-shirts and socks, some Korean coins, lots of cute pens and other fun school supplies, he gave Clarissa the cutest sandals that fit perfectly, Hello Kitty socks, clips for her hair, he gave Shawn a credit card holder, a keychain, a neat Korean pencil cup...the gifts just kept coming and coming.

Then he gave me an absolutely gorgeous jewelry box, which I was so thrilled to have because I looked at jewelery boxes just like them in Korea and thought about buying one! He also gave me a beautiful necklace, a keychain, some beautiful Korea fans, the absolute cutest fridge magnets that look like Korean food and several other little things that I can't remember at the moment. He just kept pulling more and more things out of his bag! For someone who loves all things Korean as much as I do it was pretty fun, lol. I love anything that comes from Korea. Oh! He also gave me several packages of seaweed, which made me and Shawn giggle because it's the same seaweed that they served us at practically every meal we ate in Korea and it was just too salty for me so I kept sneaking mine on to Shawn's plate when no one was looking, lol. It brought back a fun memory.

Once we got all the gift giving out of the way we showed him around the house and once he realized that we have a Wii he was pretty much feeling right at home, lol. He went right down to the basement to play Wii with the boys and they bonded over that pretty quickly. When we had Melissa here a few years ago it took her some time on the first day to warm up, but it took him about two minutes and he was off playing with the boys like he'd been here for a month.

He's sleeping in Josh's room while he's here and we moved Josh down to the spare room so Josh helped him get unpacked and put his clothes in Josh's closet and then they got ready for bed. I decided that we'll skip church in the morning so that he can sleep in. I'm sure his internal clock is all messed up and he has to be exhausted.

He seems like a really sweet kid, just super busy and energetic like literally every single other Korean person I know, lol. I think we'll have fun with him while he's here. He seems to get along well with the boys, which is great. I hope that continues to be the case!

One thing I thought was really cute was that when we were at the airport the guy that runs the exchange student program gave us the calling card info so that Michael can call home while he's here and said that all the kids needed to call their moms tonight to let them know that they arrived safely. When we got home I mentioned calling his mom and he said that he'd do it later and didn't seem like he was in any hurry to call home. I finally told him that it was time to call and he stopped playing with the kids long enough to make a quick call. I was a little surprised that he didn't seem at all homesick or eager to talk to his mom.

Then when it was time to get ready for bed I got him all settled in Josh's room, told him goodnight, closed the door...and two minutes later he came out and asked if he could call his mom again. He just wanted to tell her goodnight. I think once he slowed down and had a minute to think about it I think he missed his mom more than he thought. He's doing good though, I think he's going to be fine.

Anyway, now it's late and I'm exhausted and I'm going to bed. It looks like we've got a busy month ahead of us!

Calgon, take me away

2011-05-19T18:41:00.000-06:00

I'm having one of those weeks that every mother is familiar with. You know the one, where you're holding a screaming toddler who is really mad about something you can't seem to descipher while stepping on spilled crackers that someone didn't bother to clean up while arguing with your tween about what he can and can't watch on TV and in your brain you're dreaming of sitting on a white sand beach somewhere in a different zip code than your children with nothing but silence and some lemonade. I love my children dearly. Most days I just want to hug the stuffing out of them. This week....well, a quiet sandy beach sounds awfully nice. :)

Both boys stayed home from school again today because they both still had slight fevers this morning, but by about 10am the fevers were pretty much gone and they were both feeling better and then they were really bored. In the midst of the "I'm really bored and there's nothing to do" whining, Clarissa chose this morning to have a whopper of a toddler meltdown about something I'm still not clear on. After several days of being cooped up in the house I think we were all a little on edge this morning. Poor Shawn called in the midst of the family meltdown to see how my day was going, lol. I may or may not have told him. Loudly. :) He's a trooper, he came home for lunch and picked the kids up and took them through the McDonalds drive-thru and gave me the few minutes of peace and quiet I needed. I took that time to decide that I wasn't going to pack up and find a deserted beach after all and we were all much happier this afternoon. :)

Tomorrow the boys are going back to school, I'm going back to the gym and things should finally go back to normal. It's just been a long week for everyone around here.

So today I'm cheating on the photo again. I'm cheating so bad that this isn't even a photo. It's a scan of a drawing that Clarissa made this morning. I suppose I could have taken a picture of it but you wouldn't have been able to see it as well and this was too cute not to share.

Clarissa absolutely loves to draw and color. Neither of the boys had any interest in coloring when they were two, so I've been surprised at how much Clarissa loves it. We sit down at the table with crayons and paper together and color a lot. I also have a drawing app on my ipad and she loves to sit with me while we draw pictures.

One of the things she always asks me to draw is "happy". That means a simple happy face. I draw each part of the face and we name each feature. Eyes, nose, big smiley mouth, ears and hair. Sometimes she wants me to hold her hand and guide her while she draws it. I draw her a million happy faces a day. Sometimes I throw a sad face in there and it makes her giggle. :)

So today in an attempt to stop the toddler meltdown I asked her if she wanted to color. I got her some paper and some crayons and sat her down at the kitchen table so I could have a moment of peace and quiet. A few minutes later she came over to me and said "look mom! Happy!"

And what do you know-that kid drew a happy face! All by herself! It was just the head and eyes and mouth (which doesn't look all that happy, lol) but I had no idea she could do that all by herself! I was super proud of her. A happy was just what I needed today. :)

So here it is, Clarissa's masterpiece. The bottom is something else, I believe she said it was flowers, which is something else we draw together a lot. I love that little girl. She always knows how to put a smile on my face. :)

Paging Dr. Wendy, please report to the family room...

2011-05-18T13:55:00.000-06:00

This morning I woke up pleased to see that Clarissa was feeling better and then Matthew woke up with a fever and a really bad headache. I sent Josh off to school, made Matthew a bed on the couch, put on some old Nickelodeon cartoons for him on Netflix and then got a phone call from school that Josh was in the office with a fever and a headache. So Shawn went and picked Josh up from school and I got him settled on the couch by Matthew. And then the puking started. Josh hasn't thrown up yet but Matthew's stomach certainly isn't happy today.

It's been a looong morning. Clarissa is bouncing off the walls because she hasn't been out of the house in three days, the boys are miserably sick and cranky, my house is a wreck, I need a shower, I haven't been to the gym all week and I'm starting to stress out about getting the kids better and the house back in shape before our exchange student gets here on Saturday. I'm hoping and praying that I don't get the kids sickness in the meantime.

For the moment Clarissa is taking a nap and the boys are content on the couch so I'm taking a much needed moment of quiet and I thought I'd get a quick blog post in while I can.

Todays picture of the day is a total cheat, but given the way my day is going it's the best I can do. I didn't take this picture and it wasn't even taken today. Last week I got a call from my grandma letting me know that she was in town visiting my aunt and uncle and she wanted to know if we wanted to go to my aunt and uncles house to visit her. I don't see my grandma (or my aunt and uncle for that matter) nearly enough so we were really excited to spend the evening over there. Some of my cousins and their kids were there, which was really fun. We had a good time catching up with everyone.

I was dumb and didn't take my camera but my uncle had his and took a picture of my family with my grandma and he e-mailed me the picture today. It is really rare for my family to all be in a picture together since I'm usually the one taking the picture! So here's my cheater picture of the day. :) Let's hope tomorrow is a little less crazy and I can get my camera out for a real photo of the day.

Bummer!

2011-05-17T20:06:00.000-06:00

I just went out to check on the baby birds and they're gone. With Clarissa being sick the last couple of days I haven't been outside checking on them much and I missed watching them learn to fly. I hoped to get more picture before they left. It's amazing how fast they grew and flew away! I'm going to leave the nest there and hope that another bird family moves in someday!

Lunch

2011-05-17T17:07:00.000-06:00

Clarissa is still sick today. This morning she had a fever and was super cranky and when I asked her if she had an ouch she pointed to her ears, so we packed her up and took her to the doctor. She has the beginnings of an ear infection but we caught it early. I think this is the first ear infection she's ever had. In the year and a half she's been home she's been sick only a few times. I spent most of the day laying on the couch with her. When she doesn't feel good she just wants to be held all day. I love snuggling with her but I sure didn't get much done today!

That includes taking pictures. I took a quick picture of the salad I made for lunch. Lame, but's it all I could manage! It was a good salad though. Here's the recipe!

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2011/02/bbq-chicken-salad-with-creamy-bbq-cilantro-lime-dressing.html

Monday

2011-05-16T14:25:00.001-06:00

I totally flaked on the picture yesterday. I had plans to go outside and take some yesterday afternoon but it was rainy all day and I just never got around to it. That's a lame excuse. I tend to not be very productive on Sunday afternoons.

This morning I woke up thinking I'd get ready to go to the gym but Clarissa had a fever so we stayed home. I don't know what's up with her, she's acting happy enough, just a little tired and she was pretty warm this morning. We spent the morning cuddled up on the couch watching Sesame Street and reading lots of books.

On another topic, I've spent the past few weeks researching cures for the heartburn and acid reflux I'm still having problems with. I had to go off the medicine I was on because of the heart problems it was causing but when I went off of it all the stomach issues came back. I've tried a bunch of different kinds of antacid medications and I can't take any of them because for some reason I have severe side effects to them. I also don't really WANT to take medicine for it, I want to fix the problem.

I've tried changing my diet, chewing gum, reducing stress, eating lots of apples and about a million other suggestions I found on the internet. Nothing helped. I've been having all sorts of various stomach issues for months and I'm tired of it. I was getting ready to make an appointment to have a bunch of expensive GI tests done.

Then last week I came across some articles on Aloe Vera juice. Aloe Vera is an amazing healing ointment on the outside of your body, so the thinking is that by turning it into a juice and drinking it it can heal the inside of your body as well. There's actually some interesting research on all the things that it can heal. I did a lot of research on it and decided that it was worth a try so I went out and bought a huge jug of it at Walgreens. I drink four ounces of it in the morning and four ounces at night. It doesn't taste great by itself but it's not bad if you mix it with a little juice. After taking it for a few days my stomach issues were noticibly better. Then I added acidophilus and papaya enzyme and for the first time in months my symptoms are almost completely gone. I feel a million times better. I wish I had tried this a long time ago. One of my "30 days to a better me" goals was to figure out what was up with my stomach and fix it. I will definitely be a better me if I'm not in pain all the time!

Halfway into my 30 day experiment things are going really well. I've rediscovered my love of photography, I've reduced the stress in my life, I've gone back to the gym, I fixed my stomach problems, I'm making an effort to step outside my comfort zone and say yes to things I've been saying no to and I'm a lot more enthusiastic about life again. It's good!

Saturday our exchange student gets here (one of the things I've been saying no to and decided to say yes to!) and we're getting excited. We don't know anything about the student we're getting other than it's a boy. We're supposed to have more information by Wednesday. The boys are especially excited about it, I think this is going to be a fun opportunity for them.

OK, so now on to today's photo! I went out and checked on the baby birds this morning and I can't believe how much they've grown! Less than a week ago they were ugly little featherless creatures and now they're getting fat and they have lots of feathers! They almost don't fit in the little nest anymore! It won't be long before the mama bird is teaching them to fly. I'll miss them, I've really enjoyed checking on them every day.

Check back tomorrow for more pictures!

Fun run

2011-05-14T13:41:00.001-06:00

This morning the boys participated in a school district fun run! They had a great time!

Technical difficulties, please stand by...

2011-05-13T21:37:00.000-06:00

I bet you're wondering where me and my photo a day challenge have been! Tuesday I completely spaced it and forgot to post something and then Wednesday night I went to post and Blogger was down and it was down until today so I wasn't able to post.

But now I'm back and I have a ton of pictures to make up for the ones I missed!

But first, here's what's happening here this week. The gym is going great, I went every day this week except Tuesday. I'm loving water aerobics and I'm having a great time with it. They have three different instructors who teach the class very differently so it's been fun this week to try out all three styles. On Monday and Wednesday they have a pretty standard water aerobics class. The first half is cardio and the second half is toning exercises with pool equipment. That's how they did it at the YMCA and that's what I'm used to. I didn't go on Tuesday and when I went on Thursday and went to get the pool equipment at the beginning of class I was told that the Tuesday/Thursday instructor doesn't use the equipment. I was kind of bummed because I like the toning exercises.

And then the instructor came out!! The lady who teaches that class looks like Molly Shannon and acts just like every crazy, hyper character that Molly Shannon has ever done. She was an absolute crack up and I don't think I've ever had so much fun at water aerobics! She played really fun, high energy songs and it was almost more like a water dance class. We did these super fun, crazy dance moves and she made us sing along to the music, lol. I was It was ridiculously fun, I can't wait until Tuesday when I can do it again!

The Friday class is taught by an instructor with a totally different style. There was no music and she was a little more serious and we spent the entire hour using the pool equipment doing toning exercises. It was a great class and I got a lot out of it but it wasn't as fun as the Thursday class with the crazy Molly Shannon look alike. It was a great workout though and my muscles are definitely feeling it! It's actually really amazing what you can do in the pool with floatation equipment. We use styrofoam barbells that weigh practically nothing outside of the water, but they're super buoyant so when you push them under the water there is a lot of resistance. So it's kind of like lifting weights under the water. With other equipment we did a lot of leg and ab exercises, including crunches, which you wouldn't think you can do in the water, but you can!

I'm really glad that I've gone back to the gym. I should have done it a long time ago. Clarissa absolutely loves the child care center there and I love being able to exercise and then take a shower and do my hair and put makeup on without a toddler hanging on my leg.

In other news, our dryer broke the other day and we've spent all week trying to figure out what's wrong with it. We finally decided it was unfixable and broke down and decided that it was time to buy a new washer/dryer set. We just spent the evening shopping for a new set, picked one out, scheduled delivery for tomorrow morning and then came home and promptly figured out what was wrong with the dryer and it now works. So I guess we're canceling the delivery. I'm happy and sad about it. I really wanted a new washer and dryer but I didn't particularly want to pay for a new washer and dryer right now, so I guess I'm glad that we don't need to. We'll make do with the ones we have for a while longer.

OK, so my third story brings me to my pictures of the day! I went out to check on the birds nest in my tree yesterday and there were two baby birds sticking their little heads out of the nest!! I spent all afternoon out in my yard with my camera yesterday. It was truly awesome. It was a gorgeous day, there were baby birds in my tree and the lilacs are blooming in my yard so it smells like heaven back there. Three ingredients for an absolutely perfect afternoon.

I am really proud of these pictures. These are the kind of pictures I used to take before my long hiatus and it feels good to be doing it again.

Then today I spent some time doing some ultra close-ups of the kids. When I went to get Clarissa up from her nap she brought me her stuffed rabbit, which is her prized posession, and said that he wanted to take a nap. A friend of ours gave her the rabbit for her first birthday and we named it Toki, which is Korean for rabbit. She takes that thing everywhere and she's really cute with it. She brought me a big pillow and some little blankets and we tucked Toki in for a nap. Then she decided that he needed a pacifier and something pretty for his hair so we added that. It was so cute that I decided that I needed to take a picture.

Awesome. :) Doesn't he look cozy?

Then since I had my camera and I really love the light in Clarissa's bedroom I started taking pictures of her. She's notoriously difficult to get pictures of but she did cooperate a little bit today. I've been wanting to take some close ups of her and today she seemed to be in the mood to do it. We had a lot of fun and then the boys came home so I took some of them too. I think I've taken more pictures in the past two days than I took in the last six months! It's been awesome!!

Check back tomorrow for more pictures! :)

Back to the gym

2011-05-09T21:05:00.001-06:00

As part of my 30 day "become a better me" program, I joined the gym. When Matthew was a newborn we joined the YMCA and it was the best thing I ever did for myself. Getting out of the house every day and getting into an exercise routine was really great for me. But them we moved to this house our mortgage payment was a lot bigger than it was in our old house so we had to give a few things up and the Y was one of things we had to sacrifice.

I've really missed it and I've been meaning to sign up for a gym again for quite a while and it just never happened. But then we recently found out that Shawn's work is now offering a discounted gym membership to their employees at a gym not too far from here and it's super affordable so it was the perfect opportunity to sign up.

I signed up last week and then I drug my feet about going all week for some reason. I just couldn't get started. But I decided today was the day and I packed up my gym bag and Clarissa and I went to the gym this morning. They have a great child care center that she was super excited about, so I think she's going to enjoy the gym as much as I am.

This morning I did a water aerobics class. I did water aerobics at the Y and I really loved it. I'm always a little embarrassed to tell people I do water aerobics because I think it's seen as an old persons class. OK, so today I was the only person in the pool under 50. The reason older people take water aerobics is not because it's easy, it's because there is no impact on your joints. But I think people see a pool full of grey haired people and pass on it. It's actually a really great way to exercise. You do the same exercises you would do in a regular aerobics class but the resistance of the water makes it even more effective. Plus I just love being in the water. It's super relaxing to me. When I was a kid I spent practially every day in the summer in the pool. I used to be a really good swimmer but I rarely swim anymore.

So today it was me and a group of senior citizens hanging out in the pool. Yes, I'm super cool. :) Oh, and I packed half the house in my gym bag and forgot to bring a towel and there isn't a single towel to be found in the entire gym. So not only was I the only person in the pool under 50, I was the big dork trying to dry myself off with my clothes when it was over. Awesome. Go ahead, laugh.

Tomorrow I'm going to go back and do it again (and this time I'll bring a towel). My goal is to go every weekday if I can. I can't do water aerobics on Wednesdays because the boys leave for school a little bit later on that day and I can't make it to the class in time but I could do the bikes or the treadmill or something. It will be good for me to get out. I spend far too much time at home lately.

So with that story out of the way, here is my picture of the day. It's a snapshot I took of the kids a little bit ago when we were having scripture study. I love my kids. :)

Happy Mothers Day!

2011-05-08T18:07:00.000-06:00

I've had a great Mothers Day this year. Shawn always goes out of his way to make it a special day, which I really appreciate. I slept in late, got chocolate at church, my favorite food for lunch and lots of hugs and kisses from the kids. Shawn bought me a wireless printer for Mothers Day which probably sounds like a weird Mothers Day gift but it's exactly what I wanted! I can now print from my iPad, which I'm way excited about. The kids also made me some cute gifts at a school that I really love.

I love being a mom. I'm lucky to have the three greatest kids in the world. Mothers day also makes me think of my own mother and how much I appreciate her. I may have given her some grey hairs growing up but she still puts up with me. :)

Anyway, in honor of Mothers Day my photo of the day is me and the kids. I suppose I cheated today. I set up the shot but Shawn actually pushed the button, so technically I didn't take this picture. Close enough though, right?!

Happy Mothers Day! :)

Crap, it's 10:30 and I forgot to take a picture!

2011-05-07T22:39:00.000-06:00

I was just about to go to bed and I realized that I forgot to take a picture today! So I grabbed my camera and ran downstairs and took a few super quick pictures.

So here is what is going on at our house at 10:30pm on a Saturday night:

Matthew should have been in bed an hour ago.

Josh fell asleep on the couch.

Shawn is trying to fix the dryer.

And now I can go to bed! :)

My adoption rant

2011-05-07T09:33:00.003-06:00

Ok, first off, let me just say that I have a lot of respect for the Korean government and I will be forever grateful that they have allowed me to parent one of their beautiful children. Having said that, I'm a little angry at the Korean government today.

Here's what's happening with Korean adoption right now. Over the past several years international adoption has become a bigger and bigger issue in Korea. The Korean people (rightfully so) are not happy that so many of their children are being adopted overseas. I can totally understand that. As much as I love Clarissa and I'm so glad that she's a part of our family, I do agree that a Korean adoption in their own country would be the best thing for those orphaned children. Korea is not a poor third world country. They're a very self sufficiant wealthy country full of strong families who could provide for orphaned children.

The problem is that Koreans place a lot of value on their bloodlines and raising a child that doesn't carry on their bloodline is considered shameful. Adoption is not widely accepted in Korea. I have read articles where they talk about couples adopting in secret, women wearing fake pregnant stomachs so that no one would know they adopted, one man telling his family that their adopted child was the product of his affair because an affair is less shameful than an adoption, etc. If it is known that a child is adopted in Korea they usually live difficult lives. It can be harder for them to marry, to find a good job...so many times it is kept a secret from them and from everyone else.

The other problem is that single mothers who choose to keep their babies receive absolutely no help from the government. It's not socially acceptable to be a single mother in Korea so if they decide to do it they're on their own. Without government assistance most single women feel that they have no choice but to place their babies for adoption.

So due to the fact that there are an abundance of babies placed for adoption and the fact that few in Korea will adopt them, the government has no choice but to send them overseas. Korea has one of the oldest and most respected international adoption programs in the world. One of the reason we chose to adopt from Korea is because their adoption program runs so smoothly and for us it did go smoothly. From start to finish our experience with Korean adoption was wonderful.

But in recent years the Korean government is getting more and more flak from the Korean people about their international adoption program. Many in Korea are calling for an end to it completely. Honestly, I would love to hear that the attitude towards adoption in Korea had changed so much that international adoption was no longer necessary. Change is happening in Korea but it's been slow. The Korean government has programs in place to encourage adoption and they're working hard to make adoption more accepted and less shameful and it's working. The number of domestic adoptions in Korea is rising every year.

Unfortunately it's not rising fast enough and the government is feeling a lot of pressure to do something about their overseas adoption program. Their solution has been to introduce the dreaded quota. People adopting from Korea right now fear the quota, and for good reason.

In order for the Korean government to show their people that they are sending less and less children overseas, they came up with an Emigration Permit quota for adoptees in 2007. Children leaving Korea to be adopted overseas have to be issued an Emigration Permit (EP) to leave the country. The Korean governments big idea was to grant 10% fewer EP's every year starting in 2007. They only allow so many children to leave the country every year to be adopted overseas and once that quota has been met the remaining children have to wait until the next year to be issued their EP. That looks great for their numbers. Now whenever there is an report on Korea's international adoption program the government can pull out their numbers and show everyone that there are fewer and fewer children being adopted overseas every year. Well, yes, technically it's true. Fewer children are being sent overseas every year but that's only because the children that don't make their numbers look pretty are waiting until the next year to leave.

The first few years it worked fine enough. Clarissa's EP was issued in July of 2009 with no problem. The EP quota wasn't really even on my radar of things to worry about. The available EP's are divided among the international adoption agencies. We worked with the biggest agency in Korea, which gets the most EP's allotted to them. The smaller agencies are allowed fewer EP's. For a while the EP quota seemed like kind of a myth. Something terrible you heard about but never actually saw.

But pretty soon the cracks in the EP quota plan started to show. The smaller agencies started to run out of EP's before the end of the year. At first it was close enough to the end of the year that it wasn't really a problem and the delays were slight, but it got worse and worse and eventually there was a huge backlog. What used to be a 3-5 month wait after referral to complete the paperwork and bring a child home became a six month wait. And then an 8 month wait. And then the backlog was so big that when the new EP's were issued starting in January they had to use the majority of them up just to clear up the backlog from the year before.

Last year the second largest adoption agency in Korea ran out of EP's in April. This year? They're now officially backed up an entire year. They're reporting that anyone who received a referral through that agency after December of 2010 will not be issued an EP until sometime after the new year in 2012. That means that people will be given the photo and info of their beautiful baby and then they will wait 12-14 months before they can actually go bring that baby, who will no longer BE a baby, home for no other reason than the fact that the Korean government refuses to grant them the permit that would allow them to leave the country. Babies are not referred for international adoption until they're at least 5 months old. If they're matched with a family at 5 months and they have a minimum 12 month wait to come home, that means that the child will be 17 months old at the very earliest before they can finally join their family. In the meantime they spend those 17+ months old in foster care, bonding with a family they will have to be seperated from.

That is absolutely unacceptable. This doesn't personally affect our adoption, of course, because our daughter came home a long time ago. But it makes me angry for all those families who are waiting month after month for their child to join their family. It makes me angry for those babies who will have to go through the trauma of being seperated from their foster families after so much time. It makes me angry for the wonderful foster parents who will grow that much more attached to the babies they eventually have to pass on to their families. Seperating Clarissa from her foster parents was one of the most difficult moments of my life and Clarissa was only 8 months old. I can't even imagine trying to do the same thing with an 18 month old.

Something has got to change. The Korean government has got to put a stop to the EP quota. In an effort to make their numbers look pretty they're making the situation much worse for the children and the Korean people really have no idea this is going on. It's time for them to stop trying to save face and start working in the best interest of the children. More Koreans are adopting every year and in time the numbers will get better on their own. I truly believe that there will eventually be no need for an international adoption program in Korea and that will be a wonderful thing, but it needs to happen naturally, not because the Korean government forced the numbers.

Truthfully I don't really know what I can do about it, other than rant about it on my blog. The Korean government certainly doesn't care what I think of their EP quota. But I think people need to know what's going on. I think the Korean people especially need to know what's going on. Orphaned children need homes and if there are homes available to them they need to be placed in those homes ASAP. There's no time to discuss whether those homes should be in Korea or overseas when there are actual children waiting for families.

I pray for those children waiting for families and for the wonderful people waiting to adopt them. I hope that the Korean government recognizes the problem and works to correct it and those children can join their forever families soon. Something has got to change.

Day 6

2011-05-06T18:46:00.000-06:00

First of all, I have exciting news! We got a call from the exchange student agency that placed Melissa with us a few years ago and they asked us to take another Korean exchange student for four weeks and we accepted!

For those of you who weren't here when Melissa was staying with us, our kids elementary school has a sister school in Korea and there is an agency that sends Korean elementary school students here to experience life in the US for a month. We had a 10 year old girl named Melissa come stay with us a few months after Clarissa got here and we had a good time with her. She went to school with my kids everyday while she was here and pretty much just lived like a member of the family.

They've asked us several times since to host another student but life has been too hectic here and I just really didn't feel up to it. They called us again today though and said that they're trying to place two more boys that are coming in a few weeks and wanted to know if we would take one. I talked it over with Shawn and he was fine with it and then I asked the kids and they literally jumped up and down with excitement and begged me to do it, so I decided to go for it!

The guy at the agency read me the profiles of both boys and let me choose which one we wanted. I asked him if it mentioned if either boy takes taekwondo and it didn't but he's going to find out on Monday and let me know. If one of them is into taekwondo we want that one because I think that will be extra fun for my kids and probably fun for the Korean child. Most boys in Korea take taekwondo so I'll be surprised if neither boy takes it. It would be fun to take him to taekwondo with the boys. The Korean instructors there would be really excited to have a Korean taekwondo student visit!

Both boys are in the fifth grade so whichever one we get will probably be in Josh's class, which will be fun. They try to put the child in the same class as the host child whenever they can.

Whoever we end up with will arrive on May 22nd and leave June 21st. It will be really fun for the kids. It will make life a little more hectic for me, but I think it will be worth it. It's a great cultural experience for the boys. They learned a lot about Korea when Melissa was here.

So with that news out of the way I can move on to my photo of the day. I kind of struggled with motivation today and drug my feet a little because I couldn't think of anything good to take a picture of. I wasn't feeling creative today at all. I finally decided to experiment with a photo I've been wanting to try for a while. Frankly, this photo has been done to death. If you're in to photography at all, chances are you've seen it done. I've seen it a million times and I've seen it done much better than I did it. I''m not super happy with the results and probably wouldn't have even posted it if I didn't need a photo for my challenge, but I guess it turned out fine enough. It looks like a really easy picture to take but it was harder than I thought it was going to be! The pencils kept rolling all over the place and just when I would get them perfect my camera strap would dangle and knock one or my knee would hit the paper and make them roll around and I'd have to reposition them again. I also really struggled with the lighting.

I managed to get one that looks half decent though, so here it is. I might revisit this idea someday and try it again.

Happy Birthday Josh!

2011-05-05T17:15:00.000-06:00

Today it has been officially 11 years since I became a mother. I can't believe my little baby is eleven years old! He set his alarm for 1:20 this morning so that he could watch himself turn 11. I love that kid.

In honor of Josh's birthday, here are 10 things I love about him:

1. Josh taught himself to read at three and by the time he was six had written a 20 page autobiography (seriously!). That kid is crazy smart and I love watching him learn.

2. Josh loves to write stories and draw comics. He wants to be a writer when he grows up, which makes me smile because that's exactly what I wanted to be when I was his age.

3. Josh is a fantastic brother! He and Matthew are best friends and I worried about how bringing another child into our home would change the dynamic around here, but he fell in love with Clarissa from the moment he first saw her at the airport. He was the first one to get her to smile and he still makes her laugh every day. He's amazing with little kids. He's going to be a great dad someday.

4. Josh has a great sense of humor. He's the family clown!

5. Josh is extremely compassionate. I love how soft hearted he is.

6. He's awesome at taekwondo! When he first started he was not very coordinated or flexible and really struggled. A year later he can kick his leg over his head and you should see that kid jump! He has worked so hard and he has amazed me at how much he has improved.

7. Several months ago our church asked the children for volunteers to start a childrens choir that would sing one Sunday a month at a retirement home. Josh was one of the only boys that volunteered and he spends one Sunday morning a month sitting through an extra church service so he can sing in the choir. He didn't get his talent from his parents but that kid can sing!

8. Josh's first word when he was a baby was hi. Every time we went out in public he would wave and say hello to everyone and everyone would stop and talk to him. He still loves to talk to people. Sometimes I have to beg him to STOP talking to people, lol.

9. That kid knows his way around a computer like no one else. He makes the most awesome movies and videos that crack us up.

10. He loves Legos and builds really creative things with them. I'm always excited to see what he's going to come up with next!

Ok, so there are 10 things I love about Josh. My pictures of the day are actually really not that great, but I'm in a big hurry so it's all I've got. We're on our way to a friends house to have a Cinco de Mayo party with birthday cake for desert. I'm going to get better pictures of Josh and the cake and everything at the party but It's going to be a busy night and may not have time to post them. So in the interest of getting a blog post done for my photo challenge, you're just going to have to make do with the two picture I snapped really quickly. I may post more if I get home in time tonight.

Happy birthday to my sweet eleven year old! I can't believe how fast he's growing up!!

The Nest

2011-05-04T15:04:00.001-06:00

I was trying to think of something to take a picture of today for my 30 day challenge and I remembered that we found a bird making a nest in a tree in our yard a couple of weeks ago so I went to check it out. It's about seven or eight feet up in the middle of a big pine tree in our backyard, so it's not very easy to see but I could tell that there was a robin sitting in it. She promptly flew over to another tree when she saw me poking around.

It was too high for me to really see what was in the nest so I was off to find a ladder. Back when I used to do a lot of art and nature photography I used to do stuff like this all the time. I was always balancing on the top of ladders, crawling in the dirt, hanging over the side of bridges, trying to get into trees...I forgot how much I loved it. It's been ages since I got my camera out for anything other than taking pictures of the kids. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I was carrying my ladder across the yard to climb into my pine tree to look at a birds nest. It's pure bliss to me. The sure cure for the stress in my life.

I positioned the ladder under the tree and climbed up to the top to see if I could see into the nest. It's at a really difficult angle to see though and I scratched up my hands and arms with pine needles trying to move the branches out of the way to see better. As far as I can tell I think there are four beautiful blue robbin eggs in the nest. Yay for baby birds!

I was trying to hurry because the mama bird was watching my every move and I'm sure she wasn't happy with me. I made sure not to touch the nest or get too close to it. I couldn't really get that close to it anyway. Pine trees are really hard to maneuver around without hurting yourself! I'd have no one to blame but myself if I fell off the ladder and dislocated my shoulder. :)

I didn't really get the greatest pictures, but I tried. I was balancing on the very top of the ladder while trying to hold my camera steady in one hand and trying to move branches out of the way with the other and it was tricky. I think once the babies are born I'll be able to get some pretty great pictures though. Once they're sticking their heads out of the nest I should be able to see them really well.

After taking a dozen pictures or so the mama bird started squawking at me and that was my cue to get down and leave her alone. She chewed me out all the way back to the house, lol.

I'm four days into my photo challenge and I'm remembering all the things I loved about photography. This has already been really good for me. I'm a little rusty but I'm having a lot of fun. Check back tomorrow for day five!

The Glove

2011-05-03T14:36:00.000-06:00

I was digging through my memory box yesterday and I came across the baseball glove my dad bought for me when I was a kid.
My dad was a big sports fan. Actually that's a gross understatement. My dad was the biggest sports fan there ever was. :) He was very athletic, played high school sports, dreamed of being a major league baseball player, coached all our teams as kids and knew more sports trivia than anyone I had ever known. He's the reason the local radio station that used to give out prizes for daily sports trivia questions had to institute a rule that you could only win once every 30 days.

When he and my mom got married he couldn't wait to have kids so he could share his love of sports with them. I'm sure he had dreams of playing catch in the backyard and cheering from the stands as his athletic children dominated the varsity teams. Unfortunately he fathered three of the least athletic people you'll ever meet.

My sister was born first and she was petite and girly and defiintely not going to be sliding through the dirt into home base any time soon.

Then I was born and as a kid I was tall like my dad, more athletically built and a total tomboy. I think he had hopes that I was going to be his sports star. When I was probably about seven he took me to the sporting goods store to buy me my first baseball glove. It was almost 30 years ago and I can still remember every second of it like it was yesterday. He was really excited about it and I remember trying on lots of different gloves looking for the right fit.

We finally found a beautiful blue suede glove that was perfect. I remember that I liked it because it was so soft. We took that glove home and played catch in the backyard many times. Over the next few years he coached my t-ball teams but unfortunately I didn't inherit his baseball talent and I finally asked to quit. I''m sure he was dissapointed.

I never really played sports after that. I was always really tall and people used to asked me constantly if I played basketball and it used to drive me crazy. My dad taught me how to shoot a basketball, of couse, but I was never good at it.

Five years after I was born my dad was finally blessed with a son. There are some really cute pictures of my brother as a baby wearing a little baseball uniform. I'm sure my dad thought that he was finally going to have a child he could play sports with. Unfortunately it didn't happen. My brother has so many amazing talents but sports really isn't one of them. He's incredibly musically gifted and I'm super proud of him. He can play any instrument he picks up, which I'm in awe of. He played t-ball and basketball as a kid and my dad coached his teams but eventually he asked to quit too. There would be no sports stars in our family.

My dad was a good sport (ha!) about it and he always encouraged us to do what we were good at. We had friends of the family who had kids who played high school sports and my dad would always go to the games and cheer for them. He also played on city baseball teams every summer that I can remember.

I never played sports again after a few years of t-ball but I always hung on to the baseball glove my dad bought me. It brought back good memories of playing catch with my dad and even when I was young I knew how much it meant to him to buy it for me.

My dad died when I was 20. I miss him so much. He never got to meet his grandkids. My kids would have loved him. I don't have many tangible reminders of him anymore but I still have that glove and it still makes me smile every time I see it. I always kind of thought that maybe I'd pass it on to one of my kids if they were lucky enough to inherit my dads amazing athletic ability. Unfortunately baseball has never been something my boys have been interested in so the glove stays in my memory box where I can get it out and look at it when I miss my dad. The color has faded and it's not as soft as it once was, but it's a priceless heirloom to me.

The little vegetable that could

2011-05-02T15:03:00.000-06:00

Look at me, I actually followed through on the photo challenge for two whole days! Way to go, Wendy.

Today's pictures come to you from my backyard. Last spring we had big plans to plant a square foot garden in big garden boxes. We bought a square foot gardening books, lots of seeds, I researched it on the internet for weeks and I was super excited about it. Well, then to make a long story short the garden boxes were delayed and didn't get done until the first of July and it kind of derailed our plans a bit because that's kind of late in the year to plant some of the vegetables I was planning on.

I decided to give it a try anyway and I went out there in the 100 degree heat to plant seeds in my new garden boxes. Over the next several weeks I watered it carefully, I checked it every day and the only thing that grew was a few very sad pea plants. We had enough to harvest a side dish for about one person if they weren't too hugry.

I gave up and decided to give it another try this year and I'm going to get out there and plant my seeds in the next few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago I went outside to look at some spring cleanup projects and happened to peek in my garden and lo and behold, there was a little plant peeking up through the dirt, and here's what it looks like today:

I actually can't remember what I even planted there, but it's lettuce, right? Bless it's heart, it survived the hot summer, the frozen winter and decided to pop up its little head in the spring. Whatever it is, I'm sure I planted more just like it in the general area and none of its friends decided to grow. Way to go, little vegetable. I'm proud of it for hanging in there. :)

I took the picture and then was coming back in the house when I ran into this little guy, which I'm not nearly as proud of. I'm kind of picky about my lawn. I like it green and weed free. I suppose I should be proud of this dandilion for surviving the cloud of chemicals that was sprayed on the lawn to keep it from growing. I'm sure he had to work as hard as his leafy green vegetable friend to grow. Maybe he survived to be a photography prop. That was nice of him. :) I'll apologize to him later when I spray him in his cute yellow face with weed killer. :)

30 day photo challenge

2011-05-01T19:02:00.000-06:00

OK, so in an effort to pick up my camera more often I've decided to challenge myself to take at least one picture a day for the next 30 days and post it on my blog.

I can't guarantee that they're going to be good pictures. They might be great pictures shot with my good camera, they might be crappy pictures shot with my cheap point and shoot camera at 10pm when I realize that I forgot to take a picture or they might be pictures shot with my iPhone at the grocery store, who knows. But for 30 days I'm going to take a picture of something and post it here. I'm trying really hard to tap back into the creativity and enthusiasm that I feel I've lost lately. I'm on a personal betterment program. :) I'm taking pictures again, I'm joining the gym, I'm planting a garden, I'm going to read all the books I've been meaning to read but haven't had time for...maybe I'll be a whole new me in 30 days. Or maybe I'll still be the same me but with lots of new pictures and some carrots in my garden. Either way, it will be good.

So here are todays pictures. This afternoon Shawn was playing with Clarissa in the living room and she was begging him to play horse, where she rides on his back. She begs everyone to let her ride around on their back and once you start she won't get off for a really long time, lol. I was having a good time watching them play together so I got out my camera and took a few pictures. There's pretty much nothing I love more than watching Shawn play with our kids. He's a great dad.

Check back tomorrow for day 2!

Inside my head

2011-04-24T20:05:00.001-06:00

Wow, it's been a wild ride around here lately. Today I just have a whole mishmash of stuff to talk about.

First, Happy Easter! Here are some pictures I took of Clarissa in her Easter dress this morning:

I wanted to get pictures of all three kids together and it didn't happen. Things were just too crazy here this morning. We've had a good Easter. The kids are high on Easter candy, there is Easter basket grass all over the living room, but it's been a good day and everyone is happy.

Yesterday I took the kids to the grocery store where they were having their annual Easter egg hunt. I think everyone in town was there and it was total chaos but it the kids had fun. They block off an isle for each age group and put candy and plastic eggs all over the floor and when they say go all the kids make a run for it and fill up their baskets. Clarissa didn't quite get it at first so I told her that we needed to clean up the candy and then she went to work! She loves to clean things up, she was tossing candy in her bag like a pro, lol.

The second thing I've been meaning to share for ages and never did was the collages I made for my wall. A couple of years ago I made some cute collages on canvas of Josh and Matthew and put them in our living room. I've fully intended to make new ones and add one of Clarissa since she came home and a year and half later I finally got around to it. Better late than never, I guess!

So here is what is hanging in my living room on 20x20 canvases:

They turned out pretty cute, I'm happy with them. And I'm mostly glad that I finally finished them because it was getting pretty ridiculous that I didn't have photos of all three kids on the wall!

Ok, so there are the pictures I've been meaning to share and the good things that are going on in my life. Now for my whine. :)

So I mentioned in my last post that I was having heart problems. First of all, I'm pretty sure that everything is fine. I'll say that before I go into the story!

I've been taking some medicine for about a month and about a week ago I started having really scary heart palpitations. Not normal palpitations where your heart just beats fast for a few seconds and then goes back to normal if you take a deep breath. Like super scary, uncontrollable crazy heart palpitations. My heart would feel like it was skipping beats, then beat too fast, then go off beat and I would get really light headed and clammy and feel like I was going to pass out. It was really scary.

I did some research and found out that the medicine I had been taking for a month had a side effect of crazy heart palpitations like the ones I was having. I read several message boards where people said they had the same issue. It actually made me really mad that my doctor gave me the medicine like it was no big deal, but that's a rant for a different day.

So I went off the medication, which caused some other unfortunate side effects and I was really sick for a few days. I was shaking, my heart was racing, my stomach was in knots and it really wasn't pretty. Shawn had to stay home from work for a couple of days because there was no way I could be home alone with Clarissa.

I have serious doctor anxiety so I gave it a few days to see if the problems would resolve themselves now that I was off the medication before I went to the doctor. After a few miserable days things didn't get much better so I finally went to the doctor.

Of course by the time I made the appointment and went in the next day my heart was doing better and I couldn't get it to do the weird palpitations when I was in the doctors office so he could hear them. My heart rate was still really high for no reason though so the doctor did an EKG to make sure everything was OK. The EKG was normal and my blood pressure is normal, my heart was just beating too fast.

So the doctor decided to send me to the cardiologist for a 24 hour heart monitor. Friday morning they stuck wires all over my chest and I had to wear them for 24 hours so it could record what my heart is doing. They stuck the monitors on with a ton of medical tape and it itched like crazy. It was a long 24 hours!

In the midst of all this my heart did calm down. I have a blood pressure monitor at home and I've taken my blood pressure about two billion times over the past week and it's been fine. My blood pressure is actually really great and my heart rate has slowed back down to a slightly high but mostly normal rate. I didn't have any major scary palpitations while the heart monitor was on. Just a couple of small, not so scary ones. I have to take the monitor back to the cardiologist in the morning and then he'll look at it, write a report and give it to my regular doctor, who I have to see for a follow up on Friday.

Today I'm feeling mostly back to normal and I think the whole scary episode is over. I don't really expect the heart test to show anything too abnormal. They also did a bunch of blood tests and those were all normal too.

But while I was laying in bed this week with knots in my stomach and my heart racing I had a lot of time to think and evaluate my life. I do still believe that the original heart palpitations were caused by the medicine I was taking but after a lot of research, prayer and soul searching I think the rest of the symptoms I had all week were caused by stress and anxiety. I think I've been so ridiculously stressed out and wound up lately that the heart problems just put my anxiety over the edge and my body couldn't take it. The medicine that caused the problem was an acid reflux medication (a PPI, which I will never take again in my life) and I was taking that after ending up in the ER last month with severe stomach pains that turned out to be an ulcer. That should have been my first clue that it was time to chill out.

I admit that I can be kind of an intense person at times. I always have a lot of things going on in my head and I bottle a lot of things up. I internalize everything. I'm generally very calm on the outside but I'm rarely calm on the inside. I'm always worrying about something, analyzing things going on in my life and generally driving myself crazy. I have a hard time letting things go. There are things from my past that I still go over and over in my head that should have been resolved long ago. It's kind of exhausting to live that way.

Because I know that I'm like that I've always tried to make sure that I have an outlet for that stress and anxiety. A few years ago I went through some really major problems with anxiety and that's where my photography came from. I discovered that taking pictures was extremely calming to me. Every time I would get overwhelmed I would take my camera out in my backyard and just spend hours taking pictures of bees, bugs, flowers, grass, trees or whatever else happened to come along. It gave me something to focus on and it was really good for me.

As you can tell from the lack of photography on my blog lately, I'm not picking up the camera much anymore. Ever since Clarissa came home I don't really have the free time for it anymore. I miss it and I keep telling myself that I'm going to get back to it but it's been hard to find the time. I absolutely love spending my days with Clarissa, but as any mom knows, it's really easy to lose yourself in being the mom. It's easy to stop taking time out for yourself and when I stop doing that the stress starts to build.

I've also been stuck in the house far too much lately through all the cold winter months and that always makes me a little antsy and anxious. I need sunshine to function.

The thing is, my life really isn't all that bad. It's pretty good, actually. I have a great husband, awesome kids...I know that I have a lot to be thankful for. But there is stress even in happy lives and I let it build and build in my head until I have a week like I just had and my body tells me that it's time to let some of it go. It's time for me to resolve things from the past, stop worrying so much about the future and just live in the present and enjoy it more. I need to stop thinking and analyzing things so much and that's hard for me.

So I'm working on it. I'm working on not keeping so much in my head. I'm working on talking things out and letting things go. I hope to get the camera out more, I hope to go outside and enjoy the flowers and the fresh air more. It will be good. I have lots of life left to live and it's time to get out there and live it. :)

My Hero :)

2011-04-21T17:06:00.001-06:00

Sorry I've been MIA lately. It's actually been a really bad week. The short version of an extremely long story is that I'm having some weird heart problems that are scaring the crap out of me and I've been in bed most of the week. I went to the doctor yesterday and my heart rate was really high. They did an EKG and it was normal except for it being too fast so tomorrow I'm going to a cardiologist to have a halter monitor put on for 24 hours to see if they can see what's going on.

Today is the first day all week that I've felt somewhat normal, although still not great. I'm sure I'm going to fine it's just been really stressful and my anxiety always makes situations like this worse.

Anyway, today in an attempt to take my mind off of it I managed to get up for a few minutes and take some pictures of Clarissa in a new shirt I just got her. A few years ago for Christmas Josh and Matthew got superhero capes, which they still wear all the time. Clarissa loves to do whatever they're doing and she always wants to wear their capes so I finally bought her one of her own. It's purple satin with a big pink flower on the back of it and she loves it!

A few weeks ago someone from my adoption group announced a fund raiser for their upcoming adoption and they're selling the most awesome shirts EVER!! I took one look at them and knew that Clarissa had to have one. :) My camera was almost out of battery power and the wind was blowing like crazy so I only took a few pictures and I think I'm going to go out and try again this weekend, but I had to share the ones I got. This shirt makes me smile every time I see it (and so does the sweet little girl wearing it!). :)

The good, the bad and the painful

2011-04-05T21:21:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 36 which means I'm inching closer and closer to 40. The thought of that freaks me out a bit. Actually, the thought of that freaks me out a LOT! I don't feel 36. It was a good birthday though. Shawn always makes a big fuss on my birthday, which is so sweet. He took the whole day off work, got a friend to watch Clarissa for a few hours and took me shopping and out to lunch. He also ordered my favorite cake, which we had with the kids last night. Clarissa is still running around today yelling happy birthday. I think she hopes if she says it enough someone is going to give her more cake. :)

The other good thing going on right now is that I have a new obsession! I had some time to spare last weekend and Clarissa really needed some more clips for her hair so I dug through my craft stash looking for something to make hair clips with. I happened to have a bunch of satin left over from another failed project, so I googled satin hair clips and came up with the directions for the cutest satin flowers ever!! I had a ball making satin flower clips all weekend. Yesterday I even went out and bought satin in more colors so I could make more. I'm going to try to take some pictures and make a seperate blog post about it later this week. They're ridiculously easy to make and SO much fun.

Every time I make clips for Clarissa's hair it reminds me of when we were waiting for her and I made hair clips to pass the time. I remember hot gluing ribbon to alligator clips day after day and wondering what the little girl who would wear them would be like. It turns out that she's more amazing than I could possibly have imagined. I love that little girl so much. :)

The other fun thing happening this week is that Jin-Ha sent me the pictures of Flat Stanley's amazing adventure in Korea! If you remember from my previous post, Matthew's class is doing the Flat Stanley project and we sent ours off to spend some time in Korea. Jin-Ha and her son Do-Kyoung took him all over Seoul and got some really great pictures. He visited two palaces, the Blue House (which is Korea's version of the White House), World Cup Stadium and some other fun places. Here are a few highlights:

I love looking at those pictures. It reminds me of how much I love Korea and how much I love our wonderful Korean friends. The palace in the first picture is right across the street from the second hotel we stayed in when we were in Korea. It's absolutely beautiful and amazing to see. We didn't have time to visit the Blue House (which is the building with the blue roof in the pictures) but we could see it in the distance from our hotel window. I'm totally jealous of Flat Stanley! The pictures make me want to hop on a plane and go back to Korea right this minute. I miss it and can't wait to go back.

So there are all the good things going on in my life right now. The bad (and the painful) is that I'm having problems with my stupid tooth again! Several months ago I had crown break on a tooth that I've had a million problems with and now it's giving me problems again and I'm super cranky about it. It's had a root canal and two crowns and suddenly it's sensitive to hot and cold and it's been hurting for the past three days. I'm going to have to call the dentist who is probably going to have to pull the crown off AGAIN and I'm not going to be happy about it at all. My insurance doesn't cover a crown less than three years old so every time they take it off and fix it I have to pay for it all out of pocket and it costs a fortune. My dentist is going to be able to retire on my one tooth, lol. I've been trying to ignore it and hope it gets better on its own but that plan isn't working out so well. The last thing in the world I want to do is go back to the dentist for the gazillionth time and have that tooth worked on. I'm grumpy about it.

So I'm off to take some Tylenol and make some more satin flowers. Satin flower pictures will be coming soon! :)

Stop crying and eat your pizza!

2011-03-31T20:55:00.000-06:00

I've been occasionally worried about Clarissa's ability to speak lately. Not super worried, she's not way behind or anything, I just sometimes wonder if she's a little behind and if there's anything I need to be doing about it. She says a ton of words and gets her point across fine but she still doesn't really speak in full sentences very often. She puts words together to tell us what she wants, like "more juice" and she asks short questions like "where's daddy?" but she doesn't usually speak in sentences longer than that. Occasionally a three or four word sentence will come out. Not often though and it's still kind of hard to understand her so I'm not always completely sure she says what I think she says. I'm not really that concerned, she's progressing and communicating and I'm sure she's fine, especially considering that she didn't hear English spoken until she was eight and a half months old. I'm just anxious to hear her start speaking in longer sentences, I guess.

Anyway, tonight we were having lasagna for dinner and Josh was whining because he didn't want lasagna. We were sitting at the table eating and Josh was kind of pouting and pushing his food around. We told him he needed to eat and he was arguing about it with Shawn. Clarissa had been sitting quietly in her high chair observing the conversation when suddenly she yelled very clearly "STOP CRYING AND EAT YOUR PIZZA!!".

It went dead silent for a minute and we all looked at her like "did she really just say that?" and she looked at us like "What? Somebody needed to say it." and went back to happily eating her dinner and we all burst out laughing. I had no idea she could say a sentence that long! Apparently she has lots to say she has just been waiting for the right time to say it, lol! :)

Spring has sprung!

2011-03-30T19:24:00.002-06:00

It's finally starting to look like Spring around here and that makes me happy! It's been raining like crazy lately but then the sun comes out for a bit and it's making the grass green and the daffodils and magnolias in my yard bloom. I love this time of year. I love seeing the birds and the green grass and the flowers again. It feels good to go outside and feel the sunshine (in between the rainstorms!).

The boys have been on track break all month and Shawn took a little time off so we've had some good family time these past few weeks. We got some spring cleaning done and during Shawn's time off we got ourselves hooked on The Big Bang Theory. Seriously, how have I missed out on that show all this time? My brother kept telling me how funny it is and we have the same taste in TV shows and the same weird sense of humor, so I decided I'd better check it out. Shawn and I burned through the first three seasons every spare second we could find over the past few weeks and now I'm officially obsessed with it. If you haven't seen it, you really should!

In other news, I found an old friend on Facebook today. I love it when that happens! How did we ever survive without Facebook? :) I love catching up with people I haven't seen in a while.

When I was in high school I had a boyfriend who was really into computers and when we were newly dating he introduced me to something called a modem. :) This was in 1992, before anyone had really heard of the internet and using your computer to talk to people was a foreign concept. He hooked a modem up to my computer and it blew my mind, lol.

The only thing we could really do with it back then was use it to connect to local chat boards and it quickly became my favorite pasttime. I think I can officially blame my internet addiction on my high school boyfriend. Thank you, high school boyfriend. :)

Anyway, we made a bunch of "computer friends" and we were a pretty strange bunch, lol. I've always gotten along better with males than females and all my computer friends were guys, so it worked out well. I was the only female in the bunch, which included a 25 year old Navy guy (I was 17 at the time), a college student with a mowhawk and an earring shaped like a knife (who became one of my best friends, which completely freaked my mother out. That was just a bonus, lol.) and assorted high school boys. My friends from school would ask me how I knew all these people and my answer was always "I met them on my computer", which you can imagine got me some weird looks. In my small town in 1992 most people weren't making friends on their computer.

I've kept in touch with some of those friends over the years. Navy guy and mowhawk dude are still friends of mine and today I reconnected with another friend from that crazy bunch. Catching up with him reminded me how fun those days were. I've been remembering some good times today.

And now that I'm telling this story it occurs to me that I'm lucky that all my computer friends were nice people and not serial killers. I would never let my daughter hang out with weird dudes she met on the internet! There were no internet safety classes back then. :)

Anyway, I hadn't meant to go off on that tangent when I started making this blog post, but there you have it, the story of how I've been a big old computer nerd since high school. :) Maybe that was more information than I should have shared about myself, lol!

Stick around, you never know what tangent I might go off on next! :)

He drives around, all over the town...

2011-03-14T19:51:00.002-06:00

I was feeling nostalgic today. This is just as funny as I remembered it!

Flat Stanley goes to Korea!

2011-03-11T13:46:00.000-07:00

Remember a few years ago when they did the Flat Stanley project in Josh's class and I got him to Korea? Well this year it's Matthew's turn and Flat Stanley is going to Korea again!

When Josh did his project I didn't know anyone in Korea so I managed to get him sent over through our adoption agency and a social worker at the agency in Korea took him. (That same social worker was the one who handled our case while we were in Korea so we actually got to meet her several times while we were there, which was fun!)

This time it's a bit easier because I have friends in Korea now. I e-mailed Jin-Ha and asked her if she could be Flat Stanley's host and she's excited to have him come for a visit! She has two boys who will enjoy being his guide in Korea.

So we're going to be packing Flat Stanley up and mailing him off to Korea in the next few days. I can't wait to hear all about his adventures. I'm completely jealous, I wish I could go with him!

Rain

2011-03-10T18:05:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here listening to it rain outside. I absolutely love rainy days! There's something about being inside of a warm house when it's cold and stormy outside. It makes me want to curl up with a book. Or in this case my laptop so I can get a blog post written!

This has been kind of a crappy week. I ended up in the ER on Sunday with stomach pains and after doing a bunch of tests that all came out negative (and after leaving a bruise on my arm the size of Texas after trying to insert an IV) I think I've decided that I have an ulcer. The next test they'll want to do is an endoscopy and I'm not super excited about that so I'm eating super carefully, taking medication and hoping and praying that it goes away.

In more exciting news, Shawn signed up for taekwondo last week! He's been wanting to do it ever since the kids started and he finally decided to go for it. It's great exercise and it's a lot of fun! The taekwondo school the kids go to also offers adult classes and family classes, so he goes to an adult class one night a week and he goes with the boys to a family class one night a week and then the boys do two other kids classes per week. Needless to say we spend a lot of time at the taekwondo school these days. :)

It's fun for the boys because they're much further along than Shawn so they like that they can teach him. The boys just tested for their blue belts last week and had their first blue belt class a couple of days ago. I'm so proud of them, they're getting into more complicated kicks and punches now and it's really fun to watch what they can do. Every time they start the new belt class they look at the moves they have to learn and declare them impossible. Then by testing time they're up there performing them like it's no big deal and they're ready to move on to the next "impossible" task. :) They've been in taekwondo for a year now and they anticipate about two more years before they earn their black belts. It's been really fun to watch them progress.

In Clarissa news, I've remembered how much I enjoy two year olds! Everyone always talks about the terrible two's but I don't find two all that terrible. Clarissa is SO cute! Every word that comes out of her mouth is absolutely precious. My favorite time of the day is when she wakes up from her nap because I go in her room and lay down by her for a few minutes and she always has a big story to tell me. I can't understand 90% of what she says, but she talks and talks and it's very animated! Today she was telling me a big story and I could make out something about lunch and bread and then she started listing animals. I have no idea what she was talking about but I just eat up every second of it. I love watching her learn and grow and I love our alone time during the day. We have such a strong bond, I absolutely adore her.

This is the boys last week of school before track break. Starting Monday they'll be home for the next three weeks. It's always a little more chaotic with all three kids home but I'm looking forward to it. It's a nice break from the routine.

That about wraps up all the news from our house! Shawn left with the kids to run an errand so I'm going to go back to listening to the rain and enjoying the peace and quiet for a few more minutes. I've got to take the quiet moments when I can get them!

RIP Daisy :(

2011-02-23T20:12:00.002-07:00

After 13 wonderful years we very sadly had to put our sweet cat Daisy to sleep this evening.

She's been throwing up and losing a lot of weight really fast over the past couple of weeks so Shawn took her in to the vet this afternoon and her blood tests indicated that her liver function was very poor and the doctor was pretty positive that it was cancer.

He told us we could do a lot more extensive testing but that the outcome would be the same no matter what so we chose to put her to sleep. Shawn was able to stay with her until she passed and it was peaceful.

I've been dreading this day for a long time and I'm having a really hard time with it. I've pretty much cried myself into a swollen eyed mess this evening. Daisy was very much a member of the family and she's going to be missed.

Daisy joined our family just after we got married. Shawn and I both really love cats and on our first Christmas together we couldn't afford a present for each other so we went out and bought a sweet little kitten for $5 and after much discsussion of names we named her Daisy. I'll never forget how excited we were when we got her.

Daisy was the best kitten ever. We didn't have kids at the time and she was our baby. She slept in our bed, we taught her to play fetch and she used to drape herselves across our shoulders when we sat at the computer.

She had quite an adjustment when Josh was born and another one three years later when Matthew came along but she was a sweet and loyal cat and she was loved.

Over the years she went from being a super feisty kitten to being a fat and lazy cat but she always loved to snuggle and I could always count on her to keep my toes warm at the end of the bed at night. :)

I really really loved that cat. It's going to be really hard tonight when I don't feel her at the end of the bed and weird tomorow when I don't see her curled up in the chair in my room.

For now I'm going to have a good cry and eat some ice cream. Ice cream helps everything.

Goodbye sweet Daisy. You'll be missed.

The End

2011-02-19T22:13:00.002-07:00

It's been a fairly eventful week around here! Wednesday we went to the good old Department of Homeland Security office (for the billionth and last time in the adoption process) and got Clarissa's Certificate of Citizenship.

When Clarissa was legally adopted by us she technically automatically became a US citizen because her parents are US citizens, but of course the government made us jump through a thousand hoops to get her citizenship recognized by them.

So a few months ago we filled out a big, complicated packet of information to apply for her Certificate of Citizenship, which is what she needs to have her citizenship status recognized by the government. It's pretty much the last step in the adoption process.

We thought that they were going to just mail us her Certificate of Citizenship, but a few weeks ago we got a letter from USCIS letting us know that her COC was approved but that we had to attend a citizenship ceremony to surrender her green card and pick up her COC.

Now, because we all know that I tend to overthink things, I wasn't so excited about a citizenship ceremony. Here's the thing. I know that this adoption was in Clarissa's best interest and becoming a US citizen is a good thing. I really do. But I feel bad that she lost her Korean citizenship. To me it's just one more thing that we had to take away from her. Korea doesn't allow internationally adopted children to retain duel citizenship, (partly because if they did all the male Korean adoptees would be called into mandatory military service with the Korean military when they turned 18) but if they did we most likely would have chosen that for her. But we didn't have that option and when she was adopted by us she lost her Korean citizenship. I know it probably doesn't really matter in the long run and I know that I'm probably completely overthinking it and that it's irrational that it bothers me, but this is my blog and I reserve the right to be irrational. :)

It's not something I really think about that much until they sent us a letter telling us that we had to attend a citizenship ceremony. I think a citizenship ceremony is the most wonderful thing in the world for all those people who have dreamed of becoming US citizens and have taken the citizenship test and have finally reached their goal. I'm proud of those people and they deserve a big ceremony. But when I thought of celebrating Clarissa's citizenship I just couldn't help feeling like we'd be celebrating that she was no longer a Korean citizen. She didn't choose any of this. It was chosen for her. I know, it's irrational. I'm completely aware that it's silly. Clarissa doesn't know the difference and most likely will never care that she lost her Korean citizenship. She's only going to remember being an American.

So I kind of drug my feet about the ceremony. By Wednesday morning I was dreading it. But we put her in a pretty dress and took her over the USCIS office for the ceremony.

As soon as we walked in the door my feelings of not wanting to be there went away. We went in and there was a table set up in the front and they were taking people up one at a time to hand over their green card and get their COC. The room was filled with people of all different races and cultures who were so excited for their special day. It was really the most amazing thing to watch. People were carrying little American flags, getting their picture taken next to a big flag and there was such a feeling of excitement and pride in the air. I sat in a chair with Clarissa in my lap with tears in my eyes as I watched all those people get the official paper that declared them American citizens. I was so happy for them that I wanted to give them all a hug. I wanted to hear all their stories. I wanted to know where they all came from and what brought them here. It was a neat experience that I will never forget.

Finally it was Clarissa's turn and we went up to the table, they commented on her pretty dress, they took her green card, showed me where to sign her COC and just like that, it was official. When it was over they handed Clarissa her own little American flag to wave.

I'm still sad that she lost her Korean citizenship. I'm sad for all the things she had to lose to come here. But I'm happy for all the wonderful things she gained and I hope someday when she understands everything that happened in the first years of her life she's happy too.

When we walked out of the USCIS office Shawn commented that it signified the official end to the adoption process. We first walked into that office in 2007 to get a federal background check and to turn in our I-600 form back when we were brand new to the adoption process and had no idea what we were doing. We had no idea where the road was going to take us back then. Walking out of that office on Wednesday, holding Clarissa's hand and watching her proudly wave her American flag was a really neat moment for us. We did it. We've officially come to the end of the adoption process. There were many times where it felt like it was never going to end, but it did. I love happy endings. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of Valentine's Day. I know it's a silly Hallmark holiday, but I always look foward to it.

I didn't always like Valentine's Day. When I was a Junior in high school I didn't have a boyfriend on Valentine's Day so a friend and I, who was also mourning her lack of a boyfriend on Valentine's Day, dressed in black and celebrated anti-Valentine's day, lol. And we were in the Key Club that year and they took the Key Club yearbook picture that day so every time I look at that yearbook picture of my friend and I in our black clothes it makes me giggle. I was such a dramatic teenager. Incidentally I did find myself a boyfriend a few months later and he was a yearbook photographer. Come to think of it, I wonder if he took that picture...

Anyway, I do like Valentine's Day now. It's a fun day to get all sappy and celebrate the people we love. This morning when I made Matthew's lunch I cut his peanut butter sandwich into a heart shape, I'm making pink strawberry cupcakes for the kids this afternoon and tonight Shawn and I have a hot date. :) It's shaping up to be a pretty good day.

In non-Valentine's day news, we recently got a letter in the mail letting us know that Clarissa's Certificate of Citizenship paperwork was approved and we have to go to a citizenship ceremony on Wednesday at the USCIS office to surrender her green card and pick up her COC. Technically she's already a US citizen because she was adopted by American parents but this will finally make it official.

Then all we have to do is mail a copy of the COC to our adoption agency to prove that we finished the process and change her citizenship status with the social security office and we will FINALLY be 100% finished with the adoption. From the time we first requested an application in 2007 to the time we finish the citizenship stuff this adoption will have taken almost exactly four years, start to finish. That's a long time!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

My Valentine's Day project

2011-02-13T11:47:00.001-07:00

Most years I send my kids to school with store bought Valentine's to hand out on Valentine's Day, but yesterday I felt like doing a project and I thought I'd share the results!

This is actually super easy to do. I took a picture of the boys holding out their hand like they were holding a sucker, then I designed a really basic card, printed it out, used an xacto knife to make a small slit in the top and bottom of their hands and slid a sucker through it. Voila, cute homemade Valentine's cards. :)