Thankful Thought #1

I sat in front of the huge pile of dirty clothes. It was Sunday. Laundry day. Ugh. And thanks to the cooling temperatures, which I love, the dirty clothes are now bigger and thicker. The pile grows. And I felt it. I felt the grumbling, ugh, I don't wanna feelings rise up in me.
And then I thought about how...
at least I have a working washer and dryer.
a very large laundry room with room for sorting baskets and hanging racks for my clothes.
I have tiny little jeans and giant 3rd grader jeans to wash. I have shirts that say "DUDE!" and have Lightning Mcqueen on them. I have the cutest little underwears in the world in my laundry. Some people would do anything to have those kinds of things to wash.
I have work clothes to wash because I have a job.
I have my husband's work clothes to wash because he has a job.
I have laundry because I am incredibly incredibly blessed.
So, today, I am thankful for the laundry.

I'm also incredibly thankful for the fact that Mason can put away his own laundry. At least his clothes actually get put away every week. 
Now, I must go get dressed for work.
In the laundry room.

Mr. Four Years Old

I love him like crazy, this four year old boy.

Tonight he was sad because his older brother went to spend the night with a friend. With a whimper in his voice, and tears welling in his eyes, he said to me, "I don't want Bubba to go. I don't have any people." I then asked him, even though I was pretty sure I knew, what he meant. "I don't have any people for to play with." Broke this momma's heart! See, at age 4 Mason didn't have friends over either. But he didn't know any better. Grant, for two years now, has watched his Bubba play with his friends and he knows! He knows friends are the coolest things ever. He wants friends to come over too! But tonight I was his friend and he wanted to "go take pitchers at a cool place." And that's what we did.

I adore his expressions. They melt me.

Be still my heart.

Oh, my stars. His little naked shoulders slay me. I adore those little naked shoulders more than I thought a person could love a thing. I love them second only to his very cute tushy in Lightning McQueen undies. I'm just being honest.  If it were up to me, he'd run around in underwear all day so I could just soak up his cuteness. He's four. And I'm not a big fan of that, folks. I just...oh, my stars. I adore this 4 year old little boy of mine.

***One should note that I adore with equal passion my eldest who is not shown in this post. That is because he still hates cameras and finds it impossible to pause for one moment to allow me to capture his beautiful face and his perfect blue eyes. Mason's shoulders still slay me but in a completely different way now. His shoulders are far less babyish and far too boyish. They have little muscles. They're 3rd grade boy shoulders. 3rd grade... He's huge now. I will just have to drag him to a random field and force him to remove his shirt as well. Their shoulders are just too precious. Oh, how I love them...those boys and their shoulders.

Wednesdays

Wednesdays used to be my least favorite day of the week.
I'm worn out from Monday and Tuesday. And Friday still seems really far away.
In fact, I think I wrote a post once about how I always cry on Wednesdays. Because I do! It's bizarre really.
Wednesdays are when tired meets overwhelmed. And if you put Jenny in with tired and overwhelmed, you will get tears every.single.time.

But this year, Wednesdays are quite wonderful.
And here's why.

I walk in the door from school and the first thing I smell is Pinesol, with a hint of bleach mixed in.
I walk into the kitchen to find gleaming counters, a shining sink, and a spotless stovetop.
There are perfect little vacuum lines on all the carpets.
The couch cushions are pleasantly fluffed.
The bathroom glistens.
The boys' beds smell of downy and are neatly made.
The wood floor are spotless.
The game room floor is devoid of the millions of grass pieces that are trekked in by the dogs.
Dust has been banished.

You get the picture.
On Wednesdays, I pay Kylah to clean my house.
And it's the best thing I ever decided to do.
I couldn't find a maid. She cleans like no other. It just worked. :)

And, now, well, now when I walk in the door on Wednesday, all is right with the world.

Truly, it's amazing how much having someone clean my house has helped in so many other ways. Because she comes and will be coming again, the house stays picked up. Because she does all the real cleaning, I've organized and cleaned out closets and done those things that used to be left undone because I could barely just surface clean.

But more than anything, it's just given me such a peace of mind. It just feels so good to have a clean house. Like super clean. She's amazing. Like, you have no idea. And to know it will feel this clean again the following week is just the sweet little cherry on top of the best sundae ever.

I can admit that I have a lot on my plate. Not as much as some by any means, but still a lot. And I just wasn't getting it all done...Also, I've never liked cleaning and never been very good at it so it was always this source of...well, shame. Does that make sense? So, now that it's being done and done well, I just feel...better. Like, because this one major thing has been taken off my plate, the rest of it seems so much more doable.

Wednesdays are quickly becoming my very favorite day of the week.

Thank you, Kylah, for doing so much more than just cleaning my house.
:)

Now, are there any takers for paper grading? Anyone? Anyone? Hello?
:)

My Tuesday "Done" list. As opposed to My Tuesday To Do List

This morning my alarm clock went off at 5am.
I was out of bed at 5:18.
I threw on jeans and a bra. Meaning, yes, I kept on the shirt I slept in.
If you need to stop being my friend, I understand.
I rubbed the mascara off the bags underneath my eyes, threw my hair in a ponytail(or something distantly resembling a pony tail), grabbed the car keys and my grocery list and headed to HEB. I pulled into the parking lot at 5:32am.

You see, I have The Plan. The Plan to get it all done. The laundry, the groceries, the photo shoots, the teaching, the mothering, the running, the...everything.
A plan.
A beautifully designed, well thought out plan that takes into account Troy not getting home till after 10 at least three nights a week and that he leaves for work at 6:30am. A plan that works with photo shoots on weekends and teaching all week. A plan that allows for long runs and laundry doing, grocery buying and meal preparing.

However, The Plan was beautifully written before school started.

The Plan failed me last week. Miserably.

I won't let it beat me, though. Sunday The Plan started all over.
Sunday was laundry and long run. Good job.
Monday is get-a-little-ceasars-pizza-and-work-at-school-with-the-boys-until-they-can't-stand-it day. Check.
Monday is also supposed to be groceries day. Fail.

So, hello Tuesday.

So I arrive at HEB. It's closed until 6 am.
I return home take the world's quickest shower, put on make-up, throw my wet hair in a bun, put the jeans back on and, you'll be happy to know, a clean shirt, and head to HEB again. I buy all my groceries in, like, 26 minutes, because I have to be back home before 6:30 so Troy's not late.
I was successful!
I put away the groceries.
Work clothes on, hair done, boys up and dressed, guzzled the coffee, and on our way by 7:10.


Bell rings.
Serve breakfast to 16 4th graders.
Teach a three part, fairly interactive review lesson on Nouns and Verbs to my first class.
Meet with the other teachers during conference.
Reply to about 11 emails during conference.
Teach my second class.
Eat lunch while reading 16 very comical journal entries (My mom is extreme. Totally. My dad is chill, though.)
Write note to parent regarding student while nibbling on dessert.
Blog about my sweet sleeping boys. 
During Homeroom, meet with students to discuss AR goals.
Teach my third class.
Host 20+ 4th graders for inside recess because IT WILL NEVER BE COOL AGAIN.
Read a chapter of a book to the kids left after the bus bell rings.
Dismissal.
Call FOUR different numbers to find someone to pick up a student who wasn't picked up.
Then I submitted a technology help ticket, registered for two workshops and submitted the paperwork, requested the subs, emailed a few more people, found my desk, made copies, prepared for tomorrow...

Picked up Grant.
Cleaned our very disasterous front porch.
Grilled Fajitas for dinner.
Played Wii with the boys.
Marveled at Big Ants with the boys. (They seriously carried an entire potato chip into their home. We were way impressed.)
Ran 4 miles.
Showered.

And now, I'm about to edit a shoot.
and I've blogged twice today.

And I say all of this not because I want you to think I'm superwoman.

I'm saying it because I need me to remember that I'm human.

Because if you could see all the things I didn't get done today, you'd realize how ridiculously behind I feel. You'd understand how I could look at my Still To Do list and think, "I'm just not good enough at any of this."

And so I'm writing all of this down, because that's just stupid for me to feel that way. Look at all I did today! And thats another reason I need to write this. Look at what I can get done when I have a plan, when I set goals!
I just hate this time of year and love it at the same time. It's such a great time to start fresh, get in a routine, and set some goals. But that means it's also a great time to feel like a complete and total failure when you...fail.

But even though I didn't grade that stack of papers or hang up my word wall...still...or make those manipulatives, I still did a lot. And that's something to be celebrated.
I'm just sick of my To Do list stealing my joy.

So, it's just not gonna no more.
Said the English teacher.

PS

Grant likes to tell stories.

The other day, all four of us were driving to dinner and Grant was dishing out the details of some...thing.
When he paused for a second at what one might would assume was the end, Mason, without skipping a beat, said flatly,
"P.S. Not a true story."

It was so well timed, so well said, and so dang funny!

Tuckered out

Mason's friend is spending the night and they, more or less, kicked Grant out of their fun. They were very nice about it, and I completely understand. Little brothers are little brothers. They cramp your style.
Anyway, Grant was bored and sad. I HAD to edit. So I told grant he could watch a movie on my office tv while I edited.
I'll let you guess what he chose. :)
The first 15 minutes of Cars, he was dancing to the music, repeating the lines, forcing me to watch the " 'citing parts."
And then he got quiet and I looked over to see him sacked out on the bean bag.
So cute!
I love his naked shoulders so very much...

19

19 Lightning McQueens.
And if you're wondering, only two are exact duplicates.
Well played, Disney. Well played...

Mad Men

What on earth do my boys do during the night that makes them look like this every morning?!

Also, mason still hates taking pictures in case you couldn't tell.

Runs in the Family

Mason started a blog. It's super cute. I don't really know how it happened, but he just got interested in what all the fuss was about and so I explained, in the manliest way I could, what a blog was.
Then we set one up.
And then he posted a few things here and there and they are stinkin' cute. The simplicity of his posts and what he finds worthy of writing about is so funny!
I'm trying desperately to not say anything to him about the grammar or spelling or anything, because I know it would make him want to stop immediately. Maybe someday I will...
But anyway, if you're interested in the thoughts of an almost 3rd grader....

My Life

Comments are most appreciated.

Moments with Mason

 

Today, rather bored, I asked Mason if he wanted to go to Target with me. Oddly, he said yes. So, off we went, just the two of us, for no particular reason to Target. Does anyone ever really need a particular reason to visit Target? Going to Target is like a pastime of mine...

Anyway, we first meandered through the One Spot where I found the stickers from the previous post and he marveled at the cool  bracelet that you slap onto your wrist. :) 

Then we shared an Icee and a cinnamon pretzel. He claimed I ate most of the cinnamon pretzel and he was right. He drank most of the Icee though. 

Then we wandered about the store. He commented that I was like Gema because I was addicted to organizing tubs and because I take forever in any store.

We looked at the game aisle for a really long time and he laughed at me wanting the game with the hundreds of dice and I laughed at him when he told me about his first experience with Apples to Apples. 

We wished we had money to buy new iphone/ipodtouch cases, but ours would have to do. He doesn't like his because it's gray and he said gray is a girl color. We argued about this for a bit. 

When we walked by the baby girl section I said, "Oh! Look how sweet that is! Don't you think we need a little baby girl to wear that?" Immediately, he shook his head, and started to say no, then grinned and said, "Well... I mean, it would be so cute... but we can barely handle one!" 

It was the cutest thing he's ever said! 

Then we went to Petco because it's kind of like the zoo. There we saw the cutest animal ever! A chameleon! We were awed by its crazy eyes and even witnessed it grabbing his dinner with his long sticky tongue. It was so cute! Seriously. We also watched the Guinea Pigs for a bit. I love Guinea Pigs. I'm not really sure why... maybe because my brother had two growing up and  because of the little mazes we would build out of blocks for them to go through...yes, that has to be it. I wonder if Guinea pigs are allowed in classrooms these days... 

It was a fun little night with Mason at the ol' Target and San Angelo Zoo. It's funny how in the middle of the simplest things, you can look at your children and wonder how you ever lived in a world where they didn't exist.

Today it's a Heart

Grant could, and basically does, live on peanut butter sandwiches. And somehow along the road to peanut butter addiction, I started offering him shapes-heart(pictured), a sun and a moon(cleverly made with a biscuit cutter), even a dinosaur(actual sandwich cutter), and a simple square of course.
While grant loves peanut butter, I think the true joy comes in deciding which shape to get...
"I wanna... Sun an' a moon!! No! Wait! A heark! Yeah, I wanna heark!...No, mom, mom! A dinosaurrr! A dinosaurrr! Yay!!...no, wait..."
You'd think it'd be annoying maybe. But it so completely isn't.

More about that Family Get Together

WARNING: This is long. It's more for me so I remember this past week, than for anything. :)

In truth, we call it a Family Reunion, but when I hear that word I have visions of blood related strangers sitting around picnic tables having polite conversations wondering how much longer they have to stay. And that is so completely NOT what this past week was.

My family is, as most of you know, kind of...big. At this family reunion, it's Mom and Don. (I would love for someone to develop a word that doesn't bear the negative connotations that stepfather does.. Thank you.) And my seven brothers and sisters and their children and another four person family we've adopted as our own and when it's all said and done, there's about 30 of us present. Ranging in age from 1 to 60something.

We stay at Fort Parker State Park simply because there are group facilities that are absolutely perfect for us - a dining hall, an "old folks" cabin, 4 bunk houses, two bath houses, and a game room. Oh, and our own dock. And a baseball field. And even a cemetery that has ancient tombstones. It is perfect.

Well, this was our third year to congregate in Fort Parker, and what's great about that is we all know what to expect now. We know what to bring, what the kitchen does and does not have, how humid it is and therefore how pointless hair products are, how great a bunkbed feels at midnight, and, most importantly, the layout of the grounds. Because that's how Tammie, The Creator of The Amazing Race, works her magic.

This was our Second Annual Amazing Race. Last year we all ran around like crazies doing things like throwing cheetos at shaving cream covered heads, duct taping young children to backstops, etc. This year was even crazier. There were 22 challenges. It took 2 and a half hours to complete and I never wanted it to end! I've never sweated so hard in my life. Let's see if I can give you some highlights...

• 4 teams of about 5 people each
• Challenge number 1 was using small handheld wooden "alleys" to roll a marble the length of a baseball field. Each team member had one alley and had to roll the marble onto the next person's alley and so on and so forth until it reached the bucket at the end. I'm not gonna lie - my team rocked this challenge, finishing well before the others. 
• one of the next challenges was reaching our barefeet into a jello and shaving cream filled baby pool and finding 10 pennies with our toes. It's amazing what talents you discover along the amazing race. Amber discovered she could pick up 3 pennies at a time with her toes!
• another challenge had us slathering the head of the youngest child in peanut butter and then using said head to pick up chex from a bowl. Mason didn't exactly love this challenge. :) 
• We had to squeeze a cups full of orange juice and drink it. Refreshing in the middle of everything!
• Use baskets tied to our bottoms to catch balls. 
• bounce pencils into cups.
• Toss water balloons with towels, without popping them.
• balance dice on the end of popsicle stick while holding it in your mouth
• find certain cards in the massive graveyard
• guide a blindfolded team mate into a sprinkler sprayed field to find five of our team's colored coins. 
• build a four foot tower out of newspaper and tape and make it stand a minute.

I could go on and on and on. Mind you, this whole thing is a RACE! And Tammie had us running back and forth from one end of the campground to another. I'm telling you, I'm never as sore as I am the day after the amazing race. But it is truly the most fun ever. EVER! Oh, and my team won. :) However, the blue team was a close second and truly, we should probably share the title with them as the last challenge was fudged a little bit for us. 

The night of the amazing race we also played Capture the Flag. Now, I usually don't play Capture the Flag as I have very vivid memories of my best friend and I getting so into a game during a youth group trip that we were literally fighting, like sand throwing and rolling around in the ground. It just left a bad (and crunchy) taste in my mouth.

I apparently have a competitive streak in me.

Anyway, I decided to play this year. My nephew Adam, the one who just returned from Afghanistan, brought "land mines" and "trip wires" to use in the game. So, in various locations, if you stepped on a land mine, water would (somewhat violently) spray you. Same thing with the trip wire. It definitely added an element to the game. And we were playing in the dark.
Now for those of you who aren't familiar with Capture the Flag, the premise is simple: You try to get the other team's flag. There's a boundary of territories. You get tagged and put in jail. The rest is a little strategy and lots of running. There was only one fleeting moment of near glory for me when I used a moment of distraction for the other team to make a dead sprint for the flag and then just ran like heck toward the green glow sticks that marked our boundary. The bad part about capture the flag is that you have to, first, run to the flag and then run back WITH A HUGE FLAG while being assaulted on all sides by the opposing team who did NOT just run a million miles to get the flag in the first place.
I'm not that fast.
I was tagged. The flag was returned and I was captured.
However, I cleverly distracted their jail guard and flag guard with a conversation about who all we had in our team's jail while I watched troy sneak from out of nowhere, grab their flag, and run like mad to the boundary. So, really, if you think about it, my capture aided my team's victory. Yeah.
We played another round and this time I was in charge of guarding the jail and the flag. It's long, long, long, periods of boredom spent wondering if the game ended and everyone just forgot to tell you , sprinkled with moments of frantic running and tagging and chasing brothers and nephews who run like speedy, darty jack rabbits as you try to keep them from getting the flag or freeing their captive teammates. One game changing moment was when, the enemy, Josh was running full blast, carrying our flag, nothing but a wide open road ahead of him, when, out of nowhere, Mason jumps in front of him and stands his ground as Josh, a 30 year old man, unable to stop his momentum, runs right into him. Flag, boy, and man roll and tumble to the ground. With not a tear shed, the flag is returned and Josh is put in jail and Mason became our MVP.
Capture the Flag was awesome and I was secretly disappointed we didn't get to play again.

Now, you might be wondering how we had the strength and sustenance to do all this crazy activity. Simple - we ate. And ate. And ate. See, we split up the families into "teams" and everyone gets either a dinner or a breakfast and you're responsible for that meal only. So, for my team (mom, don, troy and I) we had a build your own burger bar. I bought as many different toppings as I could think of and each person got a bun and a patty and went from there. It was all kinds of yummy! But the best part? Our meal was the first one so we just ate the rest of the time! Every family is also asked to bring snacks, so there is a constant snack buffet of cookies and puppy chow and homemade granola and cake and all sorts of yumminess. If it weren't for all the sweating during the amazing race, I'm certain we'd all come home 10 pounds heavier.

We also played Baseball, some people fished, we played board games and sat around and talked. The boys went golfing. The ladies took all the kids swimming. We slept in our air conditioned bunk houses and took the best showers of our lives in a campground bathhouse. So many great simple wonderful moments all led up to the final night, The First Annual Talent Show.

Every person was asked to participate in some way. And it was amazing! The younger kids did skits they wrote. My sisters Amy and Christy reinacted the I Love Lucy Episode in the chocolate factory. Mom and Don were Sonny and Cher. Amber spent hours, I'm sure, painting all the different things you'd see in a super Mario Brother's game and she, Josh, Kara, and Mason re-enacted it. Adam wrote a hilarious newscast about our reunion and had some younger kids help him present it. Bekah played the ukelele while I recited Goodnight Moon(we procrastinated a bit and came up with this in the car on the way there.) But the person who stole the show was Grant. The moment he saw the trophy he could win by doing something in the show, his determination was unwavering. He told anyone that would listen, "I'm goin' to win dat trophy." And that's when we came up with this:

You can barely hear it, but he's dancing to "Old Time Rock and Roll" like Tom Cruise did in Risky Business. It was quite a hit! I still can't believe he did it. He's wearing undies and his lightning McQueen Sunglasses. He had a few more "moves" but as you could tell by the hands covering his face, he was a little embarrassed. But when it was done, he looked up at me and said, "Dat was fun!" And then asked, "Did I get the trophy?"

And he did. Now, truthfully, the real trophy was a golden cowboy hat that we're going to sign every year. The trophy he proudly holds below was going to be THE trophy, but then the cowboy hat thing happened. So, Grant didn't really win, but... he did. And man, he carried that thing around all night and now it has a special spot in his room.

It was such a great week. So many wonderful memories. I would have shared more pictures, but, truthfully, I was too busy enjoying things to photograph much. So, I'll try to steal from everyone else.
Now, I gotta go finish my 9th load of laundry. Seriously. It's a fun, but dirty week. :)

Family

I'm laying in bed on the last night of our annual family get together. We've worked up a sweat being silly competitive fools in the 2nd annual amazing race, laughed till we cried playing silly new and old games, eaten more than anyone ever should, turned into cutthroat militia in a capture the flag game that, this year, included land mines and trip wires, and had an 11 act talent show that included skits and songs and classic video game re-enactments and much more.
It's been epic.
And I have enjoyed it so much.
I love my patchwork quilt of a family.
I hate that we have to wait a year to do this again...
But we all might need a year to recover!
And we definitely need a year to get our talent ready for 2012!!!

Aw, young love...

This is Grant and Ellie.
Grant calls Ellie his girlfriend.
Ellie is unaware of this label.
Grant and Ellie had a playdate earlier this week. Grant nearly died of happiness. Ellie enjoyed it quite a bit as well. And I was filled with the joy of a mother who has finally found a few hours of entertainment for her three year old son.

life with sons

As I calmly sipped my coffee this morning, a nerf dart, shot from a good 20 feet away, splashed right into my coffee!
Boys!!!
Mason should have feared for his life but he was far too impressed with his aim to be scared.
And I was consequently too in love with his triumphant smile to pummel him.
And that is this morning's story about my coffee.

sweet boys

Michael David and Grant. Almost 2 and almost 4. All the way cute. :)

sprinklers

Man, I love this kid!
(unrelated to this post, but before I forget, lately Grant will randomly look at me and say in a sweet little voice, "you a cutie momma!" He also says it in the middle of getting in trouble. It's very hard (or impossible) to keep a stern face.)

Mason's Friend

We took the boys to the Texas State Aquarium one day and it was amazing! More posts with pictures from real cameras will come. But this is a video of mason petting a stingray! He stayed at this exhibit for like an hour! He was completely mesmerized by these creatures. If you look closely in the video you can see the stingray come up and look at him. That same stingray just kept coming back to Mason. Pretty cool!

our first game.

Mason had his first game on Monday. I felt like such a mom saying things like, "Mason! Where is your jersey?!" and "Do you have your bat and glove?" And then when I actually stopped long enough to take this picture, I seriously nearly cried. When did he get to be so big?

And so very opposed to picture taking?

Our first dugout picture.

I was actually a little nervous for him during the game. I HATED, I mean, despised, detested, abhored team sports when I was a kid. I hated the pressure of the whole my-mistake-could-make-them-lose thing. Watching Mason bat with two outs was bringing back some memories! But he has a great coach who is all about just having fun and learning the game so it really did go well, even if we did lose....

Mason played catcher for one inning. It was terrifying in the most hilarious kind of way! I don't particularly love watching my son get pummeled with baseballs. (Catching, in any position, isn't his what you might call his strength, so he was pretty much a sitting duck...)

Really...when did he get this big?

PS - I have so much else to blog about and so many pictures I want to post! But, sheesh, time is like non-existant. Hence this post at 12:34am. I'll try to catch up...