Blowing Through

What a few days we have had. They have held far too much for me to be up at 2:30am writing about them, but alast here I am waiting for a load of laundry we are in desperate need of to be done.

It all started Wednesday afternoon for me. All of a sudden I found myself running to the bathroom every few minutes. I am not a fan of frequent visits to the Throne and this put me in a bad mood. Determined not to let it ruin my day I proceeded with my tasks. At 6:00 I put one of my favorite suppers on. I pulled out the delicious pork chops only to be overwhelmed by the smell and thus I began spewing from both ends rather too consistently for my liking. I called Nick at work and requested he pick up Ginger Ale and other sickness necessities and warily he agreed without asking any questions. Nick arrived home at 11:00 and by 11:30 had joined me in spewing from both ends. One thing I learned, Nick is not a quiet puker. We were awoken at 7:00am by Isabella's horrified cries as she had just thrown up all over herself.

By Belle's afternoon nap she seemed to be doing much better. Still no appetite but it had been a couple of hours since she had spewed or pooped through layer upon layer of clothing. Good, good. Nick and I continued in our complete state of messiness all that day. Luckily God was looking after us as at one point in the afternoon we both passed out for about 5 minutes. Isabella had been watching tv inches from us. She decided that since both of us were sleeping this was her perfect opportunity to learn to get out the back patio door. Escape, she did. Thankfully the man out back playing with his son politely returned her to our home seconds later and his voice awoke us and we have not both fallen asleep since.

Nick and I stopped spewing at about 9:00ish on Thursday night. Isabella just had her second bout of throwing up this evening after a fully fine day. Was it the flu? I'm not sure as Brooklyn is 110% fine. Perhaps food poisioning? The power was out here for about 3-4 hours on Monday and although I didn't open the fridge even once while we were powerless it's possible??? I'm not sure what caused it but I hope it never happens again!

Real Moms

I was tagged by Karen to do this Real Moms post. I read around at other entries and I know I could relate to all of them, here's my two cents.

Real moms run the dishwasher and "unload" it by using the clean dishes and piling them on the counter until the dishwasher is empty and there's a pile of dishes that need to go in it. Real moms understand that pictures like this are worth a thousand words. A thousand cute words. And no matter if they use all thousand to describe it, no one else will completely understand.
Real moms have watched Disney movies from beginning to end so many times they can quote them. But this is the only scene they remember from 95% of the grown up movies they sat down to fall asleep during, I mean watch.

I tag Tanneal and Tara .

Like Leaves

This will be a post of tidbits, sort of like leaves in the fall all floating around not really joined to each other but all of the same thing.

-This week Isabella has learned to say 'I love you". She says it to Nick before he leaves for work and to our company when she has to go to bed. When we were leaving the church on Saturday she was grumpy and it was raining. So I said to her, 'Say hi to the rain drops.' Isabella replied, 'Hello drops, I love you.'. So cute.

-Brooklyn is now rolling all over the place, blowing raspberries like crazy, eating cereal three times a day and talking a lot. She is almost sitting by herself, (she starts to rock as soon as she's on her bum and the momentum pulls her down face first. If she stopped rocking she'd be fine!). She also started pulling her knees up under her this week and pushing up on her arms, I can't believe we're already on the first stages toward crawling. Where have the last 5 and a half months gone?

-We had a crazy go, go, go weekend this past one and this morning our power shut off. I looked at my clock at 8am but fell asleep knowing my alarm clock was set for 8:30. At 10:30 the girls started to wake up and that's when I realized there was no power. We all slept sooooooo long! Except Nick who had to be at work for 7:00. He still needs a break.

-I had a positive Scrapbooking Birthday Party on Saturday. All the girls said they had fun and the parents were happy and impressed with my work. I had a blast showing the girls how to use the tools and it ended up really great. I'll post my "demo" later this week. Speaking of scrapbooking, I'm just putting together an email of opportunities to scrapbook in your pyjamas. (All the things you can do online and in your own home.) Just email me and I'll let you in on the exciting opportunities!

-We do have to drain the fish tank. What we'll be doing is putting the water we have going in a slightly smaller tank. Then the tank we have going will get fixed up and we will transfer the fish into the original tank. We could leave everything in the interim tank, but it wont fill out the window as well, the bigger one is just more ascetically pleasing. We're still on track to have fish in there soon, but soon is about mid-April.

-Isabella is doing a great job potty training! We were at Ikea and she asked to use the toilet twice, and she did! Those big scray public toilets. She did the same thing at Church on Sunday morning and she has gone two days in a row of wearing just pants from when she gets up in the morning until mid-afternoon. Then she either goes down for a nap or asks for a Pull Up. Then she takes a dump. I can't wait until I don't have to clean up poop.

-Okay that's about it I have to go catch up from my crazy weekend!

Tanked

You may recall the Birthday Party idea for Isabella's birthday involving the fish tank. The party was great fun, but we were unable to put fish in for that day. Everyone brought her money for fish or fish supplies and then other toys or clothes. Since there were no fish in the tank we ended up opening presents with cake which is what I didn't want to do, but c'est la vie. After the party we realized that the weight of the tank, (250 lbs), was causing stress on the shelf and therefore it was no longer level. Nick had to drain part of the tank with our friend Jeff, lift it off the shelf, tear off the shelf, tear the drywall down to the 2 by 4, re-level the shelf, get some styrofoam to help with the equal distribution of weight, put the tank back on and then refill it. We did this on his only available night this week, Monday.

Tuesday morning we came down to find out the tank is leaking. It's most likely going to have to be drained, re-sealed, tested, made sure the seal has stuck, then start again with water, wait the two weeks to get it cultured, then test it and possibly wait longer. Yikes.

It's not leaking drastically and since we are actually happy with how the set up inside looks we've kept it set up for now. Thanks mom for the castle and other props. They're all in there.

In the World, but......

Today has been a very frustrating day for me. I asked earlier in the week about holding once a month Scrapbooking Workshops at the church. To me it makes so much sense to who I am as a person and why I love scrapbooking in the first place. I acknowledge that everyone in the church is called to be an 'evangelist'. Some will go to other countries, some will stand on soap boxes. I will listen to the stories of others and share God with them through mine and how I review theirs. What better way to open the doors to a conversation about God than by gathering on common ground, (scrapbooking), and letting my life be the example and my interaction by my ministry. I was so stoked. I had a day booked for May. Nick and I are in talks about using our too-tiny-for-a-car garage to make a mini work out room/workshop to hold smaller gatherings. I was all ready to launch a Faithbooking idea I have for smaller workshops at my big workshop. So many balls in my head got rolling as soon as the day at the church was booked.

Then today I found out that I cannot use the church. Even if I changed the event so I didn't sell anything that day. IF I would possibly make money from someone I invited to the church to scrapbook for the day I cannot use the church to do so. It's policy.

For a bit that stung me personally. I have been working so hard for so many years in so many situations to step up to the plate and make change happen, only to have so many doors slammed on me. It's just the give and take of my life, and I'm okay with that. But it takes me a second to get up and wipe off the dirt after I fall on my butt! Once that sting wore off another realization hit me which piggybacked on my Perspective post of yesterday.

I'm all fired up about how the church is failing so miserably at reaching out into the world in a relevant way. I don't want to offend or anything so I'm just going to leave that blanket statement. Sure I'm upset cuz I'm not sure I'll find anywhere else in town to hold workshops, but more than that I'm sad at all the lost opportunities for the kingdom because I might advance myself by using an otherwise empty space.

Perspective

Isn't this such a great picture series! I snapped the one in the middle first. To look at it one would assume Belle had drapped herself in a large piece of fabric. Upon turning around you can see that it's actually one of Nick's shirts, (the first pic), and at the end all the effort it took for that big shirt to stay on that little body. It got me thinking about perspective and how the same things can look different to different people, or even the same people at different times. When Nick wears this shirt it is definitely short sleeves and barely reaches his belt! What a crazy difference.

I had the delight of meeting a guy named Craig who is now one of our Church Elders. He is so totally fun, one of those folks that people are drawn to. Our conversations started initially because he's a pilot and I wanted to know more about his "exotic" jet setting lifestyle. He was at my dinner table one night and somehow the conversation got to Bowflex. He owns one, Nick wants one, I still need convincing. In that conversation he quipped some stats and related the fact that both me and him are obese. He is a typical movie pilot. The ones that look fit and trendy. I am a little cushy around the edges and can only wear my pre-pregnancy jeans if I'm not going to be sitting or eating, but neither one of us would initially be classified as obese.

After that conversation I was thinking about perspective. When I say the word obese I picture people who need their front walls removed in order to leave their house. I might even think of Ms. Wilson pre surgery or some of the larger Biggest Loser contestants. I would not have put myself in that group. To put myself in that group changes how I feel when I hear some stat stating that 80% of our country is obese. Before this conversation I would have thought there's no way that 80% of our country is obese, I'm sure 80% of our country isn't in the front wall removal category. It sure takes it home to put myself there. To realize that if I loose 30 pounds that number will go down, (even if just a small decimal), that I'm part of that statistic.

I wonder what other stats I defer from as other people's problems or which ones I think I belong to when I actually don't. Perspective really does color everything, and even I see many shades.

Of Bare Bottoms

We officially began the potty parade last Monday. We reached the end of a box of diapers and switched on over to Pull Ups and panties. That night I did laundry and over and over Nick kept saying, 'I can't believe our baby has panties in the washing machine!'. It's a tad crazy. So far she does a million trips to the potty and at some point in the day inevitably decides she just wants a bare bottom. I tend to comply because it means less wasted Pull Ups and fewer loads of laundry. There has only been once that she's insisted on a bare bottom while we had company, thankfully. She definitely has the jist of using the potty down, but still prefers the comfort of going in a Pull Up. She does a few sprinkles on the potty, a few on the floor and then as soon as the Pull Up is on she let's loose. I guess it must be a weird change to not sit in her own wetness. Although the process is a bit frustrating at times she makes me giggle so much! Whether walking bow-legged because she's peed in her panties and pants or when just the slightest sliver of bum cheek is visible under her longer shirts, I just have to giggle a little. We have not yet starting using rewards or anything as she seems really excited that when she pees on the potty she gets to wipe her bottom, (while chanting front to back), and wash her hands. I'm not sure that will get us to the destination of potty trained, but for now we'll go with what seems to be working.

Be Gentle

Today was a very humbling day for me. I had my first Creative Memories Get Together. I totally bombed. I watched the little presentation that they want you to do and it's so not me. But it's a tried and true program so I better give it a try, right? I got about to minutes in and felt so fake, so unpassionate, so unenthusiastic. That's when it started to go downhill and it never recovered. I did manage to break even so I guess that's the positive part. At least now I have confirmed that I can't do things that aren't me. One part went really good. When talking about the Storybooks I did well. I flowed, I had passion. I also had the actual Storybook in my hand and flipped pages while I was talking. I think that's the key. So I've got an idea in my head of how to revamp it and ofcourse I'll give it another go. I have two more Get Togethers scheduled in April and if both of those ones bomb I guess I'll be throwing in my hat. But I wont give up without trying and here's crossing my fingers I'll succeed.

Delicate

Have you ever tried to build a house of cards? While we were at the Pastor/Elder's retreat we had to try and build one. We were not allowed to talk to each other and everyone had to participate. Those where the only rules. The goal was to try and build the 'biggest' house of cards. Some groups used their water glasses as a base and continued to build the house on top of that, some folks thought biggest could mean widest. Our group won. Someone at our table folded a card in half and put it on the table, then folded another one in half to create a square. Someone followed suit and we made another square touching that one and another. Then we put a 'floor' of cards on top of them and did some more squares. It was very, very sturdy and we could have gone higher and higher if we had more than 52 cards. Our group was made up of people with the same personality type as ours, (we did a test prior to the weekend) and the point was supposed to be how you can't succeed with only people of your personality type. How we all need to work together.

Those in our group would say hogwash, we succeeded just fine on our own! (It's one of the weaknesses of our personality.) As we sat there in ruled silence I did a little introspecting on the activity. When looking at a house of cards one begins to realize how each card is needed to keep everything balanced, and should even one card be missing everything crumbles. It doesn't teeter, it doesn't totter, it falls into a heap on the floor and cannot be righted again until all of the cards are back in place.

I know that you all know me well enough to have figured out where this analogy is going. The card that has been missing for me: sleep. Prior to the Pastor/Elders retreat I had been going to bed about 9:30 to quiet down and fall asleep about 10:00. Then I had been waking up about 5:30 or 6:00. For the first time in my life! And it was so great. I got a start on things while the girls slept in the morning. I went up to wake them instead of being awoken by them. I ate a real breakfast and fueled myself in so many ways before anyone else was peeping. Then I went away for a weekend and stayed up until 1:00 each morning just hoping to hang out with the cool kids and have some conversations that I wanted to have.

Since then I haven't been going to bed until late at night and with that card out of place everything has been out of whack. The whole house has crumbled as it were. The house being me. I have an awful sore throat and such, I actually ate chocolate chip cookies for breakfast today! Out of whack indeed. The weekend doesn't show much promise of getting any sleep either, but hopefully Sunday night I'll be able to start pick up that card and start building the house again.

Just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and once I'm sleeping I'll write many more a post about the last two weeks, which have been busy, busy, busy.

Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy....

Well, Isabella's tank has been set up for a week now. The water is culturing but we wont be able to put fish into it until next week. I knew that could happen and I'm okay with it. Lots of folks have given us money for the fish and we're really very set and ready for them. I really like the dramatic though and was looking forward to draping a curtain over the shelf and "unveiling" the tank during her party. That wont be happening. It wont matter in the grand scheme of things, this I know. Isabella has been standing staring at the tank all week calling "Fishies, where are you??" It will still be super exciting when she calls to the fish and they're there! I can't believe my baby will be two tomorrow!

What's Going On?

I'm not sure why this week feels so insane. I am not doing anything out of the ordinary, in fact there's actually less to do because of "extreme" cold here there have been 4 snow days and when the kids don't go to school pretty much everything else shuts down as well. I've been decluttering and cleaning so we can have a house full of people for Belle's birthday, (which will probably just be a couple couples), and trying to take care of all those odds and ends that build up in life so I can focus on getting my CM business off the ground. I am taking on a few totally new projects though. None of them are all that hard but the way one is inundated with information at the beginning of any new venture is crazy. We're learning about fresh water fish, (there are going to be sharks in Isabella's tank within a few months of it being up and running!), and I'm planning a scrapbooking birthday party for next Saturday as well as my first Get Together that day as well! Busy times. Nick and I also stepped out and asked to join the leadership of the Young Married's ministry at our church which we'll be joining in a few weeks and the rest of life is just busy! Don't get me wrong I like it, but it causes some conflict. I really have been feeling God calling me to more dedicated alone time with Him and that is so hard to do in the face of so much stuff! Discipline is a hard thing to learn when you're 2 and when you're 26! I am so very tired of winter, and looking forward to summer. I know summer wont be any slower, in fact all that "free time" seems to make us busier than ever! I guess that's just the pace of life and I better get running!

Tick Tock

Nick and I had a great weekend away. I would love to sit down and tell you all about it, but life is just not slowing down! I am running like a hamster in one of those wheels today! Here's just a quick picture or two. I think our smiles say it all.