Quick update

It's been a LONG time since I've blogged. We've been so busy around our house. On Tuesday night we welcomed my cousin Lea from Kansas to our house! She will be staying with us through the summer. We've done a lot of work to get her here but it's worth it. The kids already are loving her and it seems much more peaceful here! I know it sounds crazy, but with an extra set of hands and eyes to help with the work and keeping the girls out of trouble, it makes a big difference.

Today is Bryce and Jayden's last day of school. Today is really only a half day and it's field day...or something like that. It's mostly just a play day. As of 12:30 today, I now have a 4th grader and a 1st grader. How in the world did this happen???

Later tonight I get to leave for the weekend with a handful of girlfriends to go to the beach! I'm super excited! We started this tradition last year and we had so much fun that we decided to make it a yearly event. Can't wait!

Well, that is the biggest news at the moment. I want to leave you with a story that Jayden wrote at school this year. They did some studying about shadows and all the kids had to write a story about their shadow. It cracks me up.

Me and My Shadow
By Jayden McKenney
5/2009

One day I was playing outside. We were playing on the swings. It was almost dark.

When it got dark, I didn't know where I was and my shadow got lost. I couldn't see where my house was and I accidentally bonked into it and I fainted.

It was morning and I saw my shadow again and my house.

The End.

I really shouldn't be blogging right now...

Because I have so much to do! I'm supposed to be painting out in our new camper trailer, but it's so cold outside (ugh, I'm tired of the cold) and my fingers were getting iced over. So I'm taking a break.

At any rate, I've been thinking about something for the past couple days...it's going round and round in my head, so I thought I'd get it straightened out on paper...or online I guess. I'm trying to decide if it is appropriate for a man (married/Christian or not) to give a compliment to a woman (married/Christian or not) about her looks. First I'll give you a couple of examples that have happened to me recently, then I will enlighten you all to my past and then I will wow you with my witty opinion. =)

Example #1: Easter Sunday a guy from my church whom I adore greeted me by saying "Hey Gorgeous!" and giving me a hug. It was very sweet...not at all creepy. It was exactly like he was greeting his sister. It TOTALLY made my day.

Example #2: Josh emailed the guy that we bought our aforementioned camper trailer yesterday to let them know that they had left a few things inside and wondered if they wanted them back. He emailed Josh back and at the end of the email said something to the effect of "You have a beautiful family and a very pretty wife...you are a lucky man." Josh actually twittered about that yesterday, if any of you follow him, you may have seen it. The one comment that Josh received from this update was from someone who said it was nice, but a bit creepy. Well...maybe. Josh and I didn't take it as creepy. We both took it as a compliment. But she may have been picturing something different than the family man that we actually bought the trailer from.

But her reaction kinda got me thinking about this subject of whether this is appropriate or not. Before I get into anything else, let me clarify that when I talk about a man giving a compliment to a woman, what I'm referring to is a man treating a woman like a sister...nothing creepy like looking her up and down and saying something to the effect of, "Damn, you're hot." or anything like that....that's just offensive and creepy on a number of levels. And let me tell you, we women ALWAYS know the difference between sincere brotherly love/admiration and lust. ALWAYS.

During my growing up years, I did not grow up in a family that was very demonstrative. Neither physically nor verbally. We just weren't. I didn't really know any different. By the time I was in high school, I knew (or was convinced) that I was not beautiful. No one had EVER told me that I was. Not my mom, not my dad, not my friends, not any boys. I may have had an inkling when I noticed a boy looking at me that he might have thought I was cute, but almost always disregarded it as false. When I started dating a boy my sophomore year, he was the first one that I can remember to ever tell me any differently. For some odd reason, he found me attractive. I realize that in Jr. High/High school, everyone has self esteem issues. But for me it was deeper than adolescence. It still effects me today although I am learning to fight it with Josh's help. Shortly after graduating high school I started working at an athletic club. I was working there almost full time for about a year in many different areas so I got to know lots of people. And as opposed to high school where just about all my friends went to church with me, most of the people weren't Christians. And you know what? I have so many fond memories of working there because this was the first time that I was ever in an environment where people openly flirted with me, guys were attracted to me and I knew it! Do you know why? Because they TOLD me! I realize that this sounds so silly and shallow and I'm sorry about that, but it's true. I read a book a few years ago called 'Captivating' and it talks all about the heart of a woman. And I learned in that book that as women we LONG to be beautiful, for someone to find us attractive...this is the way God made us.

So here's my thoughts on this subject. If you're a man, and you have eyes and you notice a woman who is attractive...if you can do it without being creepy, you should tell her. Because even if you're not like me and you were raised in a family where you were told you were beautiful from the time you were born, we are still bombarded daily, hourly with fake images of super thin perfect looking supermodels that supposedly what we are supposed to look like. It's so easy to believe (true or not) that THIS is what every man's ideal looking woman is. And we can never measure up to that. Those girls probably don't even look like themselves in person after all the airbrushing, etc that goes on. Every woman on the face of the earth has things about herself that she wants to change. And yet, we long to be beautiful. We just do.

It seems as though in the Christian circle especially we are especially conservative in this area. Men try to be more careful about lusting and improper thoughts. Which is great of course. And I support you in this. =) But can't there be a balance between lusting and making the rest of us feel like crap because no one has ever told us we're beautiful because you're too busy being conservative? There has to be a balance. Do you think that Jesus would have trouble with being able to tell a woman that she was beautiful? I don't think so...in fact, I bet that's one of the first things he tells women upon entering heaven. Because he knows how much we long to hear it.

The last thing I've been wondering about to balance out my opinion of this subject is whether or not I would feel comfortable with Josh telling another woman that she was beautiful. I really had to think about that. I think that if it was done in an appropriate way and like he was looking at and speaking to a sister, the answer is a resounding yes. Because I wouldn't feel threatened by that. If he was being completely appropriate and I WAS threatened by that, then that's probably my own issue to deal with.

So there's my thoughts. I would love to hear your feedback on this issue...especially from the one man who reads my blog. What do you think about men giving compliments to women?

Just because it's a funny story

In my last blog post, I wrote about how I'd been working outside a lot in the warm weather. Well, of course, where I am the girls will always follow. Especially outside. Actually they will try to go outside when it's raining, so it's not necessarily because of me that they venture out there... The girls LOVE it outside! They really do. They could play for hours out there. As long as someone was with them of course...they do not venture far without someone with them. They generally stick pretty close to my side during the course of a day, especially Kynden who is always my little shadow. I am not allowed to go out of her eyesight. Okay, I'm getting off subject.



So last week when I was working outside, I was teaching the girls to help me with what I was doing. I happened to be raking leaves and picking up rocks out of our yard. Like I said, I have wild hopes and dreams of having grass...and we can't plant grass with rocks in our yard, right? You see how I think ahead? Anyway I had gotten a little nursery pot for each girl so they could find and pick up the rocks and put it in their pot. Kynden was so super excited about the rocks. Apparently rocks are very exciting creatures. I mean, who doesn't like to find rocks on the ground, pick them up and put them in a container? Every time (and I mean EVERY time) Kynden found a rock, she would shout in pure joy, "A rock! A rock!" Unfortunately, Kynden is 2. Her words don't always get pronounced correctly. In the case of the word 'rock' the 'r' sound is replaced with an 'f' sound...and the 'o' sounds more like a 'u'. You get the idea...so every time she found a rock, she would shout, "A fock! A fock!" very loudly...and then they ALL started doing it. Sometimes she'd mix it up...sometimes she'd find a rock that was bigger than normal and she would shout, "bi fock! bi fock" (big) It was just so funny, I couldn't help but laugh. And wonder what our neighbors must think.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know

So, it's been a long time since I blogged. Well, it's been a long time since I've blogged and actually posted what I've written. It seems to be one of those times in life when everything is moving at lightening speed, but each day is so much the same that it's not worth writing about. Although that's not actually true. I have things to write about. Maybe I just haven't had the motivation to write.

At any rate, I'll clue you all in to what has been going on around here. One of these days I'm going to start a remodeling series on my blog. We have a slew of pictures that our realtor took when we bought our house to serve as 'before' pictures (and some of our own). I've been wanting to do this for various projects that have been done around the house, but I've noticed a trend. We finish the big main part of the project, but invariably move on to the next big project before we really get all the 'finishing' work done. And then I never quite feel like we've finished the project enough to take pictures...plus it seems like we're in a constant state of changing things...However, I do want to document all the work we've done. The reason I bring this up is because we're about ready to start another HUGE undertaking in our house. And let me tell you, this is going to (I think) be the biggest one yet...except for maybe moving the water heater...that was a pretty big job that I did not really participate in. Although, to be fair, the main reason it turned into such a large project was because my dad talked Josh into replacing all the hot water pipes while they were at it...I mean, why not, right? But I digress. We have a room in our house that we believe maybe used to be a garage...it's hard to tell. If it did used to be a garage, it was a small one. But the second bathroom was added on to the back of it and the front of it remains to be concrete walls, concrete floors exposed floor boards from the one upstairs room over head...not to mention that nothing is square and nothing is level...you get the idea. This room is where the former owners grew the marijuana. This room is where we have put everything in the last year and a half that we didn't have room for elsewhere and/or didn't know what to do with. Aka: a junk room. At any rate, I have spent the last week and a half working diligently to cleaning out this room. Some stuff went upstairs to the attic, some stuff went out the outbuilding aka, photo studio. And some stuff went away in some form or another, never to return again. It's actually been a huge sense of relief that has surprised me to get this done...it's like a weight has been removed that I didn't even recognize was there til it was gone.

At any rate, the reason that we're working on this is because my 18 year old cousin Lea, who lives in Kansas is coming to live with us for at the very least the summer. I'm hoping it will be longer. We've talked about this for years and it is finally happening. We want to turn the room into a bedroom so that Josh and I can take that room and we can move the boys upstairs and then Lea can have the boys' room...I know, a lot of moving around and repainting...but it'll be so worth it. In 'payment' for her room and board, she will be helping me with the kids, housework, etc...and I desperately need the help! She is going to be finding a job here as well to save up for college because she can make more money here than in Kansas. Anyway, I'm super excited. I don't know for sure when she'll be here...but it should be soon.

I've also been doing a lot of yard work this week when the sun is shining. I just can't help it. When the sun comes out, I must be in it. I've done a lot of cleaning up from the various windstorms that have struck over the winter...lots of leaves, tree bits etc, etc. I've also replanted my flower bed in front of our front porch. The things I put in last year were mostly sun plants...and once the tree in the front of our house gets all it's leaves there is NO sun there...so they all died. But I found a really nice variety of shade plants that I've put in there...so hopefully those will be a little happier. It really does something to my soul to plant flowers. I've noticed that in my house, I like to have things kind of symmetrical and balanced...and I guess I do in the garden too...but I don't like to have things matching...I like to just have a big variety of different things to look at. Hopefully when they start growing and maturing and fill in, it will look very natural and unplanned. That's me. Natural and unplanned. =) The downside to all these flowers and yard work is that it puts an intense desire in me to have grass. Again. If you've been to our house, you'll notice that our yard is really...um...crap. In the front section there is not grass or greenery whatsoever. It needs to much work. I so desire to have our kids be able to run barefoot outside in the soft grass. Someday I guess. All our 'extra' money is going into our new room for now. But man, grass would be so nice.

Stuffed French Toast Recipe

I had a couple requests for this recipe via twitter...so here is my stuffed french toast recipe...actually, it's not mine although I did alter it a bit. I got it from my mother in law who got it from one of her plethora of friends. =)

Stuffed French Toast

8 eggs
8 oz cream cheese
1 1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup syrup
6 TB melted butter
loaf of french toast bread (the cinnamon kind is extra yummy)

Cube 1/2 of the loaf of bread and spread in the bottom of a greased 9x13 pan. Cut cream cheese and scatter over bread. Cover with the remaining bread. (I actually only save enough whole pieces of bread to cover the pan and tear up the rest) Mix egg, milk, syrup and butter. Pour over bread and press to soak. Bake 40-50 min at 350. Enjoy!

*Just a note...the first time I made this, I thought it was too dry, so I doubled the amount of the milk, syrup and butter...this seemed to be better

Help?

This might be a strange place for this, I don't know. What I do know is that most of you who read my blog are friends/family, so maybe that makes it a bit less strange. Or maybe not. At any rate, I have a request.

In two weeks from now (first weekend of April) Josh and I are going to attempt to get away for the weekend....(Friday night and Saturday night). Currently we have a couple offers to take the boys overnight, but we do not yet have any solid offers for the girls. So I am wondering....is there anyone out there who might be willing/able to watch the girls overnight for a night or two that weekend? It would be probably easier on a number of levels if you were able/willing to stay overnight at our house but we would consider them going to someone else's house overnight as well.

So what do you think? Any takers?

Bryce's answers

Here are Bryce's answers to the questions from 3/19/09

1.What is something mom always says to you? Do your homework
2. What makes mom happy? Flowers
3. What makes mom sad? Lying
4. How does your mom make you laugh? tickling me
5. What was your mom like as a child? like Adelynn
6. How old is your mom? 29
7. How tall is your mom? 62" (he knows this because he recently discovered that he is exactly one foot shorter than me...which is not much of an accomplishment, height wise, but for a THIRD GRADER is pretty significant)
8. What is her favorite thing to do? go on dates with daddy
9. What does your mom do when you're not around? read books
10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for? taking care of kids
11. What is your mom really good at? getting the girls dressed
12. What is your mom not very good at?I don't know (because I'm good at everything of course)
13. What does your mom do for a job? takes care of the kids
14.What is your mom's favorite food?" chicken? (to be fair, I don't really have any favorite foods)
15.What makes you proud of your mom? making my lunch on weekends (have you noticed a trend of my boys being proud of me when I make them food? hmmm)
16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? mickey mouse (this is a weird question and deserves a weird answer)
17. What do you and your mom do together? play uno
18. How are you and your mom the same? same color of eyes
19. How are you and your mom different? length of our noses (I'm glad I'm over my self conciousness about my nose =)
20. How do you know your mom loves you? she says it often
21. What does your mom like most about your dad? funny
22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go? ikea

Jayden's answers

I stole this questionaire from Andrea's facebook...I thought it would be a fun blog. These are questions answered by Jayden on 3/16/09

Cut and paste these questions and ask your kids their answers....

1.What is something mom always says to you? Get ready for bed.
2. What makes mom happy? Helping her
3. What makes mom sad? Disobeying her
4. How does your mom make you laugh? Tickle!
5. What was your mom like as a child?Played with friends
6. How old is your mom?29
7. How tall is your mom?29 feet (ha!)
8. What is her favorite thing to do? playing with daddy (how true!)
9. What does your mom do when you're not around? Chores
10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?I don't know
11. What is your mom really good at? Making dinner
12. What is your mom not very good at?cleaning up the girls' room (Probably because they trash it before I can even finish, in my defense)
13. What does your mom do for a job? coffee shop
14.What is your mom's favorite food?" hamburgers (not really true)
15.What makes you proud of your mom? when she makes me eggs and biscuits
16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? spongebob (I have no words)
17. What do you and your mom do together? make cookies
18. How are you and your mom the same? we're family
19. How are you and your mom different? you're a girl and I'm a boy
20. How do you know your mom loves you? because she tells me all the time
21. What does your mom like most about your dad? kissing
22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go? church

Six

After every single school day, Jayden comes home with a pocket full of pictures that he's drawn for me. It used to be that they were always pizza slice looking pictures of race cars, but it has more recently become pictures of hearts. He always announces to me that he's made me something and sheepishly but proudly pulls them out of his pocket, opens them up (they are always folded into very small squares) and awaits for my approval. Today was no different except for his announcement that he'd made me 6 pictures today. He pulled the lump of folded papers out of his pocket and proceeds to open each and every one of them. As he's opening them and spreading them out around me I asked him if he made me six because he's almost six years old. At first he laughed and said yes...but then he thought about it and said, "It's because I loved you six times today." "Only six?" I asked. "Well, maybe seven....or ....another high number." Gosh I love that kid.

Negligent

Yes. I know. I'm fully aware that I haven't posted a blog in over 2 weeks. I don't really have an excuse other than lack of things to blog about and lack of motivation to blog. Oh yeah. And the Twilight series.

So for better or worse, I'm going to throw out some randomness of what has been happening over the last two weeks. I might even throw in some pictures.

~ 1 ~

Mostly over the last two weeks, it's been difficult to blog because of the plague. If the Egyptians had continued to not let the Israelites go, the next thing God would have struck them with is whatever we just had in our house. I'm sure of it. It started out as the flu. Jayden was literally laying on the couch for about a week. A WEEK! He definitely got the worst of it. Fever, achy, coughing, headache..etc, etc. Then it got passed around and it got me. Then towards the end of the flu, somehow Jayden got pink eye. And then that got passed. I did not get that one though. But all three girls did. And then there was some sort of stomach thing. People started throwing up for no particular reason that I could tell. On top of this, getting sick has caused Bryce's asthma to act up and it feels like he's been coughing forever. Although my flu was significantly lighter than Jayden's it seems like it's been taking a longer time for me to feel back to normal. I really only had about 1 day of not being able to do anything and one other day were I didn't do much...and then it's been manageable. But I still, even now do not feel like I have gotten all my energy back. When I go to bed, I literally pass out. And that's not normal for me. It's also harder to get out of bed in the morning and get going. But at least I can say with somewhat certainty, that we are on the upswing.

~ 2 ~

We learned a few days ago that we have an unwelcome occupant in our chicken coop. A rat. Dis.cus.ting. I've never actually seen a rat in real life, but I have a pretty strong fear of mice and bats...so I'm really hoping that I don't actually come face to face with the rat. Josh was thankfully the one who discovered the rat and he's been outside a few nights with his bb gun trying to shoot it. I do not know if he's been successful. However he did shove packets of rat poisoning down the various potential rat holes. I'm hoping that there will be some success with that.

~ 3 ~

Have I ever mentioned that I really dislike the age of 2 in children? Because I do. Really. I didn't like it much when Bryce was 2. I liked it less when Jayden was 2. Now as I deal daily with 3 2-year-olds I find that I like it significantly less. There's always a war going on in my head and my heart. One side tells me to just endure it. Get through it and it can't possibly last forever. The other side tells me I need to treasure this time because this time of the children being so small and home all day is so short. These are my last 'babies' and I can't ever go back. *sigh* But then the other side comes back and says, "yes, but won't it be so nice when they grow up and are not always in three places destroying things faster than I can put them back? and won't it be nice when I can clean a room and it will stay clean for more than 5 minutes so I can feel like I've accomplished something...anything during the course of a day?" Ugh..I feel guilty.

~ 4 ~

Here is a picture that I meant to post a while back...Remember that windstorm we had a few weeks ago and there was destruction everywhere you turned? This happened just down the street from us:
Oh. Dear.

~ 5 ~

Oh..this happened a few more than a couple weeks ago, but do you remember my "brilliant" idea about hot gluing some particular items of furniture down to our floor so that they girls couldn't move them? Well, for some things, it was a brilliant idea...but for other things it was, well, less than brilliant. Little did I know at the time that the girls were going to be using the kitchen that I lovingly built for them for Christmas for a jungle gym. I know, can you say, "duh"? Well, to make a long story short (I had intended to make a whole blog about this, but never did) Kynden fell off the kitchen (I presume since I wasn't actually in the room at the time) and ended up falling on the table and breaking her collar bone. Oops. Big oops. Although Kynden was not happy in this particular picture, she really didn't seem to mind wearing her sling for about 5 minutes at a time. She seems to be acting perfectly normal now and totally healed. But boy did I feel guilty about that glued down table.

~ 6~

I know, I know...you're wondering how much longer I'm going to make this blog...well, I have 2 more things. The first? Two words. Kitchen remodel. No, nothing like spending thousands of dollars on new cabinets and appliances....however, we have added some cabinets and are soon going to be adding new counter tops to the sink side of our kitchen...as well as 8 feet of additional counter space. The problem? I've been waiting and waiting to be able to complete this project. I finally made it down to IKEA to purchase the matching counter top that we put on the other side of the kitchen. Josh began destroying the old tile counter while I was gone. And then. I found out that they were SOLD OUT! It's been over a week of living with wrecked counter tops and their website still says they're out of stock and don't have a delivery date yet. Doesn't IKEA know how long I've been waiting?

~ 7 ~

We were able to attend church yesterday for the first time in several weeks. Our pastor challenged us to do a "fast" to get ready for Easter in 6 weeks. So Josh and I chose to "fast" from TV. We figured that anything we wanted to catch up on we could watch online after Easter is over. It's going to be interesting. Man, as I was writing that, I just thought about Lost. I did not consider Lost in this equation. Darn. We'll see how it goes. Right now, we're looking into listening to some audio books and maybe getting into a better habit of praying together. I'll let you know how it goes. That's it for now. I'll try not to stay away for so long next time.