"It's ok to not do it all"

~Dove Chocolate Candy

Thank You! I needed that.

Last night I was craving chocolate and selflessly let the oldest child have the last scoops of ice cream topped in chocolate topping. I did not cry. I texted. I texted Joel how much I was craving chocolate. I must be coming down with a cold. I only crave chocolate on two occasions. "That time of the month" and when I have a cold and my throat hurts and I can't taste it or enjoy it because it sticks to my throat and makes me feel worse. So unfair.

This morning when I woke up there was a gift of Dove chocolates bequeathed to me on the bathroom counter where a loving husband knew I would find it as soon as I woke up and it would brighten and cheer up my day.

I love that they have tiny little messages printed on the inside of the wrapper just for me.

Oh, they have them for you too?

Hmph.

I thought I was special.

Anyway, half of the fun of eating Doves is reading the message inside and I know each one was picked especially for me. Today I needed that message.

Too often I feel like I take on way too much. I bite off more than I can chew. I've accepted the position of drummer for Spinal Tap.... Well, maybe not that drastic.

The other message I got was, "Live every day up to your expectations, not others." Dove is so wise. I think that one goes hand in hand with the first one, don't you?

I feel a tickle in my throat coming on.

Short Notes

Well, it wasn't that bad. It didn't cost as much as I thought it would either, yay for that!
The hygienist told me after cleaning my teeth that if that's all the plaque I get after two years I can most definitely be put on the yearly visit list. She said she's seen people get that much plaque in two weeks. YAY me! This excites me because I had so many years of bad bad dental problems and finally I have my mouth under control and the teeth I have left are healthy and strong and are looking good. I hope my dental worries are over for several years, at least for my mouth. My kid's mouths on the other hand...

I can't believe there's only 6 or so more weeks of school left for my kids! This year has flown by so fast for me. Every time I feel like I have time to catch my breath, off we go again on a new adventure! Joy will be finished with her school a few weeks before the other kids, that will be nice to have our whole days to ourselves. Her parent teacher conference went well. She's doing good and she's a very good student and friend. She loves to help and is never pushy or rude. I love hearing good things about my kids, especially the social stuff.

I just signed the kids all up for t-ball. As much as I whine about having to drive around every Tuesday and Thursday evening, I sure do love watching the kids play the game! I love that at this age it's ok to root for kids on the other team too because they are our kids friends at school.
I like sitting with my mother-in-law chatting about "things". It's great fun. I think that it will be one of those things I will surely miss when my kids are grown. I hope that they have their kids in baseball and invite me, their grandma, to all of their games. I would love that!

Joel's official graduation ceremony is Friday. I also love all the pomp and circumstance of that whole thing. He worked so hard and did so good all 7 years. He was always striving for A's and very rarely came in close behind. It's a big deal and deserves to be celebrated! He's been an inspiration to many people who know him, especially me. Congratulations!

I hate going to the dentist. I just know every time I go I'm going to get a huge bill for it. I've had a history of horrible teeth. They've been much better since most of my molars are now fake. Just kidding (kind of). They've actually been much better since I stopped drinking pop and only chew sugar free gum.
Today I have to go in for a cleaning and x-rays and I have to have them look at my bridge that got a chip off of it this winter because of a cough drop. It's not noticeable to the eyes, just the tongue.
Last night I dreamed an old friend came back to visit me, or at least I thought she was here to visit me, but all she wanted was her shoes back. She came, she took them and left. Didn't stay to chat, didn't have time to bother with me anymore. She looked younger, skinnier and tanner.
I wonder what this dream means. Too bad they don't have a class at college called Introduction to Dream Interpretation.
Today while I was going to the store I got a phone call from the school nurse at Joy's school. She wanted to touch base with me on the situation with Joy's eyes. Last year when Joel was laid off the program "Gift of Sight" helped us pay for her exam and new glasses. It's been a year and she was checking up on the situation. That's fine. What I hate is when I have to talk to professionals and they try to get me to call this or that place to see if my kids qualify for low cost health insurance or such. I don't have extra money for insurance, not even low cost insurance. Don't you think if I did, I would??? Sorry people, but we live off of one man's income and we have student loans we are paying back and groceries, clothes, sports and gas cost an arm and leg. There is just no money at the end of the week for anything extra. We have a great doctor that has worked with us and charges less than she should for our visits and we don't take advantage of her generosity. But every time I turn around they want me to sign up for this or that, or contact this person or that for my kids health care. Sorry. My kids are pretty healthy and don't need a whole lot of extra care.... LEAVE ME ALONE! As of right now, I'm not breaking any laws paying my doctor cash for our visits. Obama would like to change that, but we'll see if that ever happens.

I finally got all the kids rooms cleaned up. I just have to dust Jake's and go through the endless piles of videos and DVDs to figure out what ones are mine and where the covers are for the disks and the disks for the covers.
My body aches all over from all the bending, squatting and kneeling I did.
I went over to the college yesterday and registered for three classes next fall. I will be doing 10 credits, 12 is full time. I will be doing Introduction to Art online and then at the school campus I will be taking Introduction to Speech and General Psychology. I think this will be a good work load for me to start after taking one class this summer (along with a math prep class). I'm actually going to be doing two math prep classes in the next couple of months, the first is Elementary Algebra (I feel so dumb about this one) and then College Math prep class. These should get me up to place on a test into the higher math class that I need to complete to get my Bachelor's.
Jake is thinking about transferring to my college. He had better get a move on it if he is going to. YIKES! I was just thinking he had to get his application into the college he is at now by April 1, last year. It would be great if he could be at the same school as me, maybe we could have some classes together, and I understand how things are done at my school more than at his.
I saw a bunch of PSEO kids at the college yesterday when I was registering and I kept feeling like I should have been one of the parents there too, not the student. It's strange to think of myself going to college at such an older age, but I think there are a lot of people there that have at least 5 years on me, so I don't feel quite so odd, just a bit.
I need to get Joy out of the house, I've been ignoring her too much the last few days with cleaning and errands.

When I got up this morning I had a bunch of energy and frustration that made me attack my kids rooms with fierce cleaning power. The frustration was the product of a missing remote control that had failed to appear in the last 24 hours, regardless of the entire family searching.

First I attacked the girls room and pulled out of there two bags of garbage, two bags of goods and an art easel to donate, and vacuumed a whole canister of garbage and dust! My goodness! Who knew two little girls could shed so much skin in 6 months??? No remote.

Later in the day I grabbed a hold of Joshua's room. I just have his dresser drawers left and then his room will be done. No remote. One giant bag of wooden blocks and a handful of baby books made it into the donation pile.

After everyone took a turn searching the parental unit's recharging station and the oldest child's bunker we resigned to the idea that we would have to pull out of our secret stash a backup remote that I had ordered a while ago when we thought the other remote was broken. Joel reluctantly got the backup remote out because images of his childhood days of painstakingly getting up out of his chair and reaching for a button to change the channel was more than he could bare nearly forced him into the fetal position. Good thing I had a back up plan and he can remain manly and upright.

Sorry for yesterday's outburst, I still stand by what I said, but I probably should have used less colorful language and exclamation points.
Our country is in serious jeopardy of becoming just like any other country in the world and I don't want that. I don't want to be like Europe, for one reason it's not working for them, and another reason is that we have too many enemies to have open borders. Plain and simple.
Arizona's Governor had to take drastic steps to protect her state, which is a state that borders Mexico and is a state that is seeing extreme amounts of illegals and seeing the effects of having those illegals in their state. If the Federal Government won't do it's job, then the Governor of Arizona has to. It's her job to protect her citizens and to secure her borders.

Onto other topics...

We went to a baptism today for the son of a family friend. That was exciting. I love going to baptisms and feeling the sweet spirit there. I love seeing the person fresh from the baptism, so clean and pure. Other than being a newborn baby there is nothing else so pure. I love it! Congratulations Logan!

I'm having a hard time getting my head into my editing this week. I'm really behind what I want to be in getting a family's gallery up online. My Photoshop keeps freezing up on me and I keep loosing fun work I've done because of it. That's irritating and makes me lose my enthusiasm.
I better get back to work...

This just rips me up

This is my blog and I can write what I want and if you don't like it, you can leave, I'm ok with that. Really. I'm not one of those people who need the approval of others to feel good about myself.

I am sick and tired of this whole bleeding heart crap our country is into.
Subject of today's bleeding heart:
Oh, we can't racially profile anyone, because heaven forbid we might offend Jose who came here legally. However, it's ok for Arizona citizens, who are tax payers, who are protected by the Constitution of America to be raped, kidnapped, killed, etc. by illegals trying to get their drugs into America... oh yeah, that's OK because heaven forbid we make anyone feel a little uncomfortable about asking them "DO YOU BELONG IN THIS COUNTRY?"
Would an American be offended to show their citizenship status to a French policeman who's pulled them over for a traffic violation, to make sure they are in the country with a passport? Probably NOT! It's normal and even EXPECTED! But aparently we here in America can't do that to people in our country.
Also we should have our hearts bleeding money for the women who swim across the canal while in labor just to have their babies here, "to make a better life" for them. Hello? Do you know how many hospitals in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas have closed because the illegal babies ran their bank accounts into the ground? How is that better for ANYONE?????
I'm so tired of people wanting laws based on emotions instead of good common sense! Use your head people! They are here ILLEGALLY. Meaning, against the law! Meaning they are involved in criminal behavior! Coming here illegally is criminal whether you have weed in your pocket or not. Rules are rules for a freaking reason.
The US has laws about illegals being here... why are so many people against letting law enforcement enforce those laws? Arizona passed a bill today that makes it easier for their officers to check someone if they are a citizen. Did you know that most states have laws that won't allow an officer to make sure you are in the country illegally if they suspect you aren't??? Can you imagine going to any other country and their law enforcement not being allowed to ask you if you are there legally? You wouldn't dream of it! And you would never think twice when being asked for your visa, when they hear you speaking like an American. You wouldn't think "those dang racial French!". *roll eyes*.
Get a grip people. The law is the law, now let our officers and border patrol do THEIR JOB, which is TO PROTECT the US and it's citizens!
'Nuf said.

Fun

It was fun to see some of my work in print on Sunday when I went to church. This image was taken last year one evening. We had only a couple of minutes of light left to take a few images. Part of this image was taken 20 minutes before the choir showed up. I'm so glad I took that one image, because I needed it and it turned out beautifully.

Hotdish

Growing up in Minnesota you hear the word "hotdish" often. Any time people get together with food there's a hot dish in the mix.
Tonight I am craving something, can't put my finger on it. I think I've narrowed it down to hot dish, but I can't be sure, because I don't know that I've actually ever eaten a hotdish before. I googled "hotdish" and found this explanation in Wikipedia "Hotdish is a variety of baked casserole that typically contains a starch, a meat or other protein, and a canned and/ or frozen vegetable". Yup, that sounds like what I'm craving. Most recipes I found consisted of elbow mac, hamburger, tomato of some sort (canned, stewed, soup), spices and maybe corn or cheese. Okay, sounds like something I can make.... with a few modifications.
Jaeden just asked me what is for dinner. "Hotdish", I answered. "What is hotdish?", she asks. "A bunch of food mixed up and served in a hot dish", I answer. "What kind of foods?", she asks.... "Hmmmmmm", I think, "do I tell her the truth?". She wasn't happy about my answer. "Tomato!?" she cries. I hope she doesn't end up growing up to be one of those freaks that don't like tomatoes.
so now I'm debating what I want to put in my hotdish. Maybe if it works out I'll post the recipe here. Right now the hamburger is browning and I think I need to grate some cheese.

It's official. I'm registered for classes starting this summer! I'm feeling smarter already :)

Gosh there is so much to think about and ducks to get in a row. Thanks Michelle for all your help!

This made me laugh outloud

I got this in my email this evening...

Back in wrestling again

Josh started a new session of free-style wrestling last night. It's a bit different. You get points, it seems, from every little thing. You want to wrack up as many points as you can to win each time period, or get a pin. As much as I whine about the cost of it, and the time commitment, I really do love my kids being in sports and being active and having fun. So it's really not as bad as I make it sound.

Usually I end up sitting alone and nobody talks to me, but last night I was in an unusually chatty mood and chatted with a lady I sat down next to. She has 4 kids of her own and is a single mom who also takes care of 2 foster kids at this time. Two of her kids are grown, one lives on her own, the other has autism and lives with her. He is not able to make the right decisions and is an easy target for people, so she lets him live with her so she can help him. She is about to graduate from college, I can't remember the degree she's getting, but she's having a hard time finding work too. She keeps getting messages from places she's applied that they've picked someone with more experience than her. Joel has been dealing with that kind of rejection for a year now. It's so hard to get your foot in the door now days in careers with so many overly qualified people being laid off.

Footprints in the Sand

Tonight while the older boys were at the Priesthood session of Conference I took the three little kids to play at the park. At first they threw a ball around, warming their arms up for the upcoming baseball season. Then they ran around the playground like maniacs and then finally settled down into a corner with their sand toys and tried to build sand castles strong enough to resist the damage of a tossed baseball.

As I watched my kids play and enjoyed the quiet chatter they made (they've been fighting like crazy lately) an older couple approached the playground with their teenage son.

I could tell that their son had recently had some sort of brain injury, his body looked as if he had been healthy until recently but for whatever reason he now had slow motor skills.I watched the father help his son onto a swing and proceed to push his son as a pendulum. The mother swaying in the swing next to him.

I imagined what this family may have recently gone through and was touched by the love and care these parents were giving their son. I thought about parenthood and how it really is a life-long commitment to another human being. Sometimes things go different than we plan and we end up taking care of our children a lot longer than we normally think we would. I thought about our Jacob, when he broke his femur. What a year long ordeal that ended up being and how much our family went through to take care of him. How thankful I was that his injuries weren't worse.

I looked at my children playing and watched them in wonder, what wonderful people they are and I was given a new persepective tonight, new gratitude, new wonder.

I watched the family walk down the path and out of sight, the son clinging to his mother's arm.

I guess we never really know the lives we touch, or the reflections we cause, when we are just living life the best we can.

The footprints in the sand under that son's swing will be gone tomorrow, but they will forever be in this picture, and probably in my head as well.

I caved...

HAWT

Uh huh, that's what my man is, in his new pair of these...This man in the picture below shows up when I Google "Hot business man in glasses" and Joel is even hotter than him, and he doesn't even have to stand in a desert to get hot.

But that could also be due to my "wife goggles".

I'll have to snag a picture of him later when he's not looking. He's more elusive now that he can see what's really going on around him.

Small Blessings

So many of you know the little saga we had with Joshua having a really rotten teacher for the first half of the year. We'll call her Ms. Meanie
Well, the saga continues....
So, Ms. Meanie sees Josh in the halls at school every day and he says she sometimes stares at him and always has a mad look on her face. That would creep me out. From the last parent teacher conferences we know that all the teachers know something happened. Jaeden's teacher basically said so, but said she didn't want to get into all the details, but wanted us to know that she has some say in who Jaeden goes to next year. She said the teachers all get together and hash it out. That was good to know.
Anyway, back to Josh....
Last winter Josh's class (with Ms. Meanie) worked on a writing assignment where they wrote their family's traditions for the winter holidays. Josh worked very hard on his and I know he had to rewrite it several time so it was nice and neat and had proper punctuation.
Yesterday I was going through his backpack and found a book in there called, "Family Traditions". I opened it and it was a pop-up book he'd made out of his story. A lot of time was put into this book! It was so cool to see. I said, "Josh, didn't you make this in Ms. Meanie's class?"
He told me that he was coming out to the school bus for home when his friend Duky, from Ms. Meanie's class, ran up to him and gave the book to him telling him that Ms. Meanie had thrown it away and he had rescued it from the garbage!
I couldn't believe it! I know that Duky risked something to rescue this treasure for my Josh, I was so impressed! What a wonderful friend Josh has. What a rotten teacher to throw it away knowing Josh was still in the school and she could have given it to him by other means.