Definately Not Cut out to be a Single Parent!

So just a brief update, I took the kids to the park to meet up with "the Mommy's" and participate in an Easter Egg Hunt. I thought what the heck, I will take both of them with me! It is the park, we will have a good time! Oh crazy, crazy me! What was I thinking?!? hee hee hee All in all we did have a good time, but they have such different abilities right now, I was worried that they were going to knock their teeth out, while at opposite ends of the slides! Leigh-Ann is all about the big slides and the fun monkey bars now! Landon also wants to slide, and climb, and do it himself! So he needs to be on the smaller playsets! So trying to keep an eye on both of them and make sure no one ran off with them (which would be almost impossible surrounded by so many friends) made me sort of frantic. My lesson learned was that it was a good thing that I am not a single parent and do not usually have to brave the park alone (with two children under the age of 3!!!). I promptly called Lance as we left the park to let him know how much we loved and appreciated him, and to drive very careful on his way home from the park. I informed him that if anything happened to him, his children might not get to go back to park until they were pre-teens! Unless of course, Gramps and Big Mom want to come back and take them again.....ahhhhh Grandparents!!!! Such a beautiful thing!!!



So here are some pics of our egg hunt and our time together at the park!


Here is Landon! I had to carry the basket and follow him around. But once he had his hands full he didn't really see the need to "gather" more bounty!

Here is Leigh-Ann with the bigger kids getting some eggs too!

Landon had almost as much fun trying to go up the slide the wrong way as he did going down the slide!

Here is Landon going back up the stairs...so he can go back down the slide....so he can go back up the stairs....so he can go back down the slide.......where is sissy?!? Oh wait....he doesn't care.....back up the stairs.....

Oh there is Leigh-Ann.....climbing like a monkey all over the play area....for just a little bit Mommy conned her to playing on the "baby" play area with Landon!

She is testing out the little slide....Landon is heading back to the stairs......

And up the monkey bars again....

All smiles.....we are having a good time....

I must have been too happy!

So I was in such a good mood yesterday...I was buzzing around the kitchen cooking dinner...and planning all the things I was going to finish last night after the kids were in bed (still unpacking/organizing). Then as I was heating the glaze for the ham, the doorbell rang. I thought it would be the sprinkler guy (who has been a no show for two weeks and was supposed to be here yesterday)...but instead it was a Trugreen sales guy...who would NOT quit talking even after I told him we had already hired someone. Finally I politely told him dinner was probably burning, I had to go. Turns out the glaze DID burn UGH!!!! Then I went to push that out of the way and grab the ham out of the oven. As I was placing the ham on the stove, something went wrong. I don't know if I fell first and then split the juice or if I split the juice then slipped in it.....either way...the result was scalding hot grease water ALL down my legs and bare feet. Lance came in and took care of me and rubbed it down with aloe and cream after I soaked it in a cool bath. All in all it is going to be ok....but I have a few mild burns that will probably take a few days to heal.

So after that the night was kinda shot. So much for my great mood. Then the lawn guys did come for their weekly time to mow the grass. Seems that I have the dinner time slot. The mow around 6:00 to 6:30...what is up with that?!? Leigh-Ann was fascinated with watching them work out the window. I thought, what are we teaching our kids, she knows that Lupe will clean the house and change her sheets and that some strange team of guys come and mow the grass while we sit at dinner and see them out the window. I don't know if the value of manual labor is being taught very well in our house.

Had my monthly doctor's appointment this morning, all is good with the growing baby! So we are just moving to July. I had however gained 5 lbs since my last visit! UGH....need to keep an eye on that. I am thinking about taking up Prenatal Yoga. My friend Margaret went to the gym like 26 days last month...I am thinking that I could use a teensy weensy bit of physical activity in my life (but not 26 days worth!). My next appt is the testing for the gestational diabetes (ummmm the yummy orange drink...not) and my shot of Rhogam for being Rh-. So that appoinment will not be too nice. Good thing after my burn incident that wasn't today!

Also, thought I would share some pics with you. In effort to be a good working full time Mommy I took some time to go have a Mommy Daughter thing with Leigh-Ann. We went to the "Doll Store" and did some shopping and then on to a Dolly Tea Party! We went to the American Girl store and I let Leigh-Ann pick a bitty baby and then we went to the Bitty Baby Tea Party!

As you can see, we ended with with TWO Bitty Babies instead of just one! They actually came as a part of the Bitty Twin Set. She had to have two girls...I really thought she would want a girl and a boy...but that wasn't the case.

Here are all the girls listening to story time and participating in some games together.


Now taking some time to color our placemat. You will also notice that the blonde baby has now changed clothes! We bought a couple of outfits before the party fot the dolls...and this one needed to wear one right now!

See that tounge hanging out while she colors? I don't know who she gets that from ?!? ha ha ha

All smiles...she is REALLY enjoying her time....she just loves baby dolls!

Snack time came. Fresh strawberry (they had some strawberry jam inside...YUMMY) muffins and even fresh strawberries! And lemonade, of course!

Each doll had to have some dedicated attention and an opportunity to share in the snack!

Leigh-Ann and Mommy checking out The Big Pink Chair in the party room before we left!

We had a great time! We will have to come back for some of the other Bitty Baby events!

A New Day!

O.k. o.k. I have fallen off the wagon. For quite a while I had a Myspace blog. Although I did not blog daily, I did blog fairly frequently. Then I had friends/family that did not have Myspace, but some of them had an independent blog. So I decided to start a second blog (this blogsite) to update people specifically about the children. Then with life and the kids I found two blogs to be time consuming and instead of blogging to one or the other….I sort of let both blogs just sort of fall off the radar screen.

But lately I have started to realize how cathartic it was to me to blog and I miss that. So I have decided to go back to blogging and I am going to try and be more consistent with that. Only this time I am only going to maintain one “thought stream” and I am going to merge it all together. So this will no longer be dedicated just to what the kids did today, but more about where I am in my life today. Hopefully you will find that you want to read along from time to time, maybe even give me advice…..

Recently I had not been in the best mental place. Work has been very stressful as we have had a lot of layoffs in the recent months and the stress and pressure is really high. So working full time in a pressure cooker environment blended with two children under the age of three, and then now being pregnant! I think the exhaustion and stress started to put me in a negative place more often than a positive place. Recently I realized that I was missing the “passion” the all out fire that made me feel alive and start each day kicking ass and taking names. I believe that “passion” is what has made me “successful” up to this point in my life. Where did the passion go? Did I use it up, wear it out, let someone else have it?!? I don’t know, but it just felt like I let myself get on the treadmill. I have to tell you that I DO NOT find the treadmill to be the equivalent of biking through the mountains! Just kinda felt like a rat in the rat race going through the motions. Don’t get me wrong, I had good moments. The kids could do something to just melt my heart and make me smile, I would have a great meeting or accomplishment at the office…but IN GENERAL I felt like I was waiting for something to be better.

I didn’t like it. I like to feel energized, excited, happy, PASSIONATE! So I started trying to figure out how to get back to the basics. I realized that I had let Rule #1 that my Dad taught me as a kid go out the window. He told me that, You have to like yourself before anyone else can like you. He must have said that a million times. At the end of the day, I got it, the message was self-respect. How can you expect the world to respect you if you do not respect yourself? I had lost, among other things, the most basic thing, self respect. I let my boss bully it out of me. I let the Mommy’s who stay at home make me feel like I missed “special chances” with my children. And so on. There are no shortage of opinions directed at you all the time. Connecting with others attitudes of judgement, hostility, anxiety, was my new energy flow, my level of respect both for myself and for them. Negativity is low respect. I am not a low respect person…although I was starting to have a lot of that negativity in my life. So I have chosen to plug back into the positives in my life. And with that I have found more and more self-respect again. I feel PASSIONATE again, I mean really passionate about life. It feels good!

I recently read a quote by Gerald Jampolsky “When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge.” So I have been finding some peace in letting the judgements go and focusing on the positive things in my life!

In my Myspace blog I always concluded with what I was grateful for. I am going to try to add that consistently here now. I am grateful that I have found some peace and passion again. I am grateful that there are things in my life to be passionate about and that I have such a loving and supportive family and group of friends in my journey through life. I learn so much from them and I can only hope that when they need me, I will be able to give them as much as they have given me!

1st Day at Disney World

Well we made the flight to Disney World with no major issues! Woo Hoo! Landon slept for all but about 45 mins of the flight...so that made it REALLY easy! Leigh-Ann just played with her toys and looked out the window and was as happy as could be! The first day was basically a travel day. We stayed at the Wilderness Lodge up by the Magic Kingdom and we took the Disney Express to get there from the airport. So we got checked in and changed the kids into clean clothes and headed over to our dinner reservation at the Grand Floridian hotel. We took the ferry from our hotel over to Magic Kingdom and then took the monorail over to the Grand Floridian. I had booked us a Character Dinner at 1900 Park Fair. Dinner with Cinderella! This was on Sunday which was Leigh-Ann's actual birthday! So she spent her birthday dinenr with Cinderella! Jeez....if that is what you get at 3, what is there to look forward to now?!? hee hee hee

We had to wait 45 mins on our dinner reservation...so that was not too impressive. And where we were sitting it took the characters a while to make it around to our table. However, all in all, I was glad that we did this, because if we hadn't she wouldn't have seen this characters....we didn't seem them (other than shows or parades) any other time in the park!

You can see they gave Leigh-Ann a crown that said Happy Birthday! Check out dinner our first night:

Here is Leigh-Ann and Lady Tremaine (Cinderella's mean step mother!) She played the part very well!


Here she is singing Leigh-Ann's autograph book. Each page has a place for the autograph and then a place to insert a picture! Leigh-Ann was very excited to get her book signed!

Here is Leigh-Ann and Anastasia, one of Cinderella's mean step sisters!

Leigh-Ann got really good at making sure she had her book when she saw a character!

Leigh-Ann and Drizella! They all played their parts very well! It was cute.

Here is Leigh-Ann and Prince Charming! She did not want to pose with him, so I offered to pose with her so she would have a picture with her autograph! I guess it is a good thing she is not crazy about the boys yet....how long can I hope that will last?!?

FINALLY! Cinderella!!!! Oh how Leigh-Ann loves Cinderella!

Oh, I digress.....for those who did not see the pictures...Leigh-Ann was Cinderellla for Halloween. Which she picked ALL BY HERSELF! So she absolutely adores Cinderella!

More of our little princess!
And don't forget "baby Yoda!"
She really looks after him ....she is a good big sister and he is such a sweet boy!!!!!!

More on our Disney Trip coming up!!!!!!

Leigh-Ann turns 3!!!!

O.K. O.K. I know I know...everyone has gotten on to me for starting this blog and not updating consistently! Not that is counts...but for the first time in 15 years...I didn't get my Christmas cards out on time! As a matter of fact I STILL haven't sent them! And call me crazy but I think I will send them next week! :-) Better late than never right! I would just say wait until next year..but I have pics to send out..so they will have to get done! But life has been CONSTANT since the first week of December! So I will fast forward this post to about a week ago! Leigh-Ann turned 3 years old on February 7th! 3?!? Can you believe it! Where does the time go? We had a party for her and her friends (a 3 year old has friends?!?) at Pump-It-Up (she LOVES it there) on Saturday! Then on her birthday, Sunday we flew to Orlando! We spent 5 days at Disney World! Which, if you haven't heard we moved two weeks before her birthday to a house about 10 miles from our other house! So shouldn't everyone take a week long vacation, right after taking a week off work to move! So with a house full of boxes STILL, we set off for Disney World! More on that in the next post!

So back to the birthday party! We had a wonderful party and I thought I would share some of the pictures with you!

Here is Leigh-Ann and Aunt I-Ya! I forgot to tell Aunt I-Ya that socks were required to jump! Oooopsss! So to be able to get in and hang out in the actual bounce houses she had to wear my socks! Hee hee hee...teach her to show up in her flip flops!

Here is Landon and Daddy enjoying the bounce houses too! Landon got to do the slides and many of the jump sections...he had a GREAT time too! Man did he have a good nap afterwards!

Leigh-Ann enjoying one of the many slides!

Leigh-Ann and I-Ya sliding together!

Leigh-Ann and Devin coming down together!

When we were trying to decide a party theme Leigh-Ann just kept saying, it has to be PINK!!!! So I brought home some different party plates and she picked Ariel! Now the cake was another issue! It was supposed to have Ariel sitting in the ocean....but oceans are blue...not PINK! So we had to alter it to fit our needs! ;-)

Here are most of the kids (I think we lost one or two to the potty or somewhere) at the party. Leigh-Ann was so glad all her friends came!

Here she is scoping out that cake....licking her lips and planning her wish!

Blowing out the candles! And we didn't even practice that..she just knew what to do!

And FINALLY enjoying the cake and having a good time!!!!!