A hunkered…

….down day.  We didn’t even set alarms last night.  I just knew that there wouldn’t be school.  This is what I woke up to (a good hour and a half after I would normally wake up):

…and this:

This of course lead to a lot of this:

That all lead to hot chocolate and then a major cozy session which involved televisions and video games:

Wouldn’t you love to be a kid again on a snow day?  How fun is that?  After this was over, we all enjoyed the fact that no one had anything to do (I had surrendered to getting nothing accomplished today when my head hit the pillow last night) and mom made this homemade vegetable soup for lunch:

De-licious!  Ultimately, Alden and I ended up on the couch, under blankets watching a movie together.  Now the phone just rang and church has been cancelled tonight.  So, Tim is on his way home with Starbucks and we’re continuing our hunkered down positions.

 (yes….I’m still in my pj’s and yes, it’s 4:20 here)

A bit of…

…news and a quick thought.  First, the menu for this week is up.  I’ve moved it to the side bar to the right and you should see it listed under “pages”.

Now for my thought: I think it is important that we teach our children how to handle stress.  I think that we have become so accustomed in our society to making everything alright for our children: not letting them cry, telling them it’s ok when clearly they are upset and it’s not ok, etc.  I remember when the boys were little….I felt so strongly that I needed to teach them how to sleep on their own.  I thought, “how frustrating would it be if I wanted to sleep and needed Tim with me or needed this or that in order to fall asleep?”  I taught them how to go to sleep on their own and it made a world of difference.  Tim and I had time to spend together in the evenings, they could put themselves back to sleep in the middle of the night without waking up the entire house, etc.

Now I think it’s the same with stress.  Look at the adults around you.   Notice that some of them handle stress and some don’t?  It isn’t a temperament thing, people.  It’s a learned thing.  God love my husband, he’s a wonderful man.  He was never taught how to deal with his stress and to this day it is something that he struggles against.  I am trying to strike a good balance for my children.  They need to learn that work (school) is serious and you have to achieve and you have to do your best.  They also need to know that there is a time to shrug it off, relax and enjoy your life (even with the stressor still present).

Alden is frequently upset when he gets off the school bus.  The kids have been misbehaving and he’s just wired about it.  He now gets home and goes to his room for about fifteen minutes.  He either lays on his bed and looks out the window or reads or sometimes listens to music.  This is teaching my child to cope with his stress in a healthy way.  See what I mean?  Kaitlynn gets all wound up and she takes a bath.  Powell, well, Powell doesn’t really get stressed out, he’s pretty mellow.  But when he gets agitated he knows he needs to be alone or sometimes he’ll go in the garage and hit/kick the punching bag. 

So what is something you can do to teach your child how to handle the stress in their lives?  Not to try and eliminate the stress or pretend it isn’t there, the bad mood doesn’t exist, the bad mood is bad (which is also not good, they’re allowed to be grumpy; they’re just not allowed to be rude/mean/disrespectful in their grumpiness).  Let’s not send our children out into the world without preparing them to have the best life they can possibly have.

Now, on a lighter note: Kaitlynn got new glasses!  She was in a rut of always picking the pink-rimmed metal glasses.  I convinced her that new glasses would be so much better by selling her on the idea that we would get matching glasses.  I think she looks so cute!

I’ve been thinking…

….alot about friendships lately.  If you are reading this and you are living in a place where your friendships are all around you and have been for years, you are a blessed person.  Don’t take it for granted.

Friendships are hard to come by, at least the good ones are.  Friendships that are able to be comfortable enough for you to go there, to really go there with a person and not be afraid of what the other person is thinking.  I am fortunate enough to have some very good friends in my life; and they aren’t seasonal friends.  I’ve had good seasonal friends (the ones that are just there for a while but while they are it’s great) and I am grateful for them.  But I’m talking about the friends that as time has passed you know will be there for the rest of your life.  I’m not talking about family, those types of friendships are completely different.  I miss my sisters every day but somehow they are so integrated into who I am I don’t really think of them as friends.

Which brings me to my next point.  The commitment of friendship.  I had a counselor one time do a personality study on me.  He said that I scored the highest he had ever seen on what it takes for a person to let you in and on commitment.  I thought that was crazy.  Basically he said, and I quote: “tell your friends to feel tremendously proud of themselves because it takes a lot for you to let someone all the way in but when you do, they’re in for life.”  When he put it that way, I agreed.  I take the commitment of friendship very seriously.  If you need me, I’m going to be there.  I’m going to call you to make sure we don’t drift apart and I’m not going to offend easily by you because I know you love me and anything done that hurt me was most likely inadvertant and I realize you’re not perfect.

I left so many good girlfriends two and a half years ago when I moved.  It’s clear to me now who was a seasonal friend and who is sticking like glue (it’s pretty much who I thought before I moved).  Do you mind?

Crazy what this woman has become in my life and crazy what she has seen.  Truly me at my ugliest moments.  I had a lot of people in my life when Tim was sick and they were wonderful to me.  Tricia was my girl that I could cry with snot flying and say ugly things that were running through my mind.  She was always able to listen, no judgement and sage advice included.  She knows it, but God uses this woman in my life…really uses her to speak to me.  I love her with my whole heart and am so grateful to know her intimately.  She is my soul sister.

And then there is DeAnna.  Funny and smart as a whip.  DeAnna tells it to me straight when I need to hear it and can pray down Heaven like you can’t believe.  I love this woman.  I love that even though we don’t talk every week I know that if I needed her, she’d be on the next plane out (I hope she knows that works in reverse).  I’ve watched her life transform and cheered as she began to soar beyond what she thought her life would be.  This woman has depth and loyalty (don’t cross her or those she loves).

I don’t have a picture of Pam on my computer.  But Pam is almost like the younger sister I never had.  But she is also a peer and a great friend.  Pam is the first person I broke down with after Tim as diagnosed and I’ll never forget the way she held me (on the floor), let me cry and didn’t say a word for something like 20 minutes.  She just held me and let me know she was there.  It makes me cry now.  I love Pam; she is mellow and easy to be around. 

I am here now, in Tennessee and they are all still in California.  I am making friends but it has been difficult.  I don’t like surface friendship.  Don’t have the time for it, don’t like it, never have.  So again, if you’re reading this and you’re surrounded by your friends, consider yourself truly blessed.  Friendships are hard to come by and they take time to build.  The good ones will make you cry until tears run down your face and wipe them up when they’re paired with pain.  Hold on to them; don’t forget to call and to make time for them.  Friendships are a commitment that you have to keep and you have to nurture.

Ahhh!

Lookie, lookie!  Its there in the top right hand corner!!!  There isn’t baking for this week as I had hoped because my children are melting and I need to get off the computer.  Happy cooking!

It’s got to…

….stop soon, I’m sure of it.  Crazy, crazy couple of weeks.  Tim’s so busy with the new restaurant but the kids have been GREAT.  So great that we decided to get them Rock Bank for Valentine’s Day.  There has been a lot of this going on this weekend….

Now, as promised, the cooking school page is almost ready to go.  It will be done within an hour of this posting, yay!  Finally.  There were pictures that I took but I can’t find them on my computer now for the life of me.  So, sorry for the lack of those but I promise, more will be in future ones.

Meanwhile, here are the Valentine books I made for the kids.  I was so happy with them but promised I’d keep the inside private, they wanted it to be just between me and them.  Sweet little things.

Finally…

….I am feeling human again.  My goodness that was a long haul.  I’m back up to about 85% though and good thing!  I promise to post the cooking school stuff over the weekend so you can be up and running on Monday.  Today is the day to get caught up on all the stuff around home that got pushed to the side while I recuperated and had the kids home for an unexpected SNOW DAY.  Third one in three weeks but guess what?  It actually SNOWED!  Not enough to justify a snow day, but still, at least it snowed and looked pretty for a few hours.

The kids and I were busy with getting Valentines together.  This year I got the brilliant idea of making X and O cupcakes.  I love how they turned out.

(you have to click on the pictures to see the whole thing because I’m a dork and can’t figure out how to insert them at just the right size) 

We brought these two over to my dad….LOVE that he is only two blocks away!  He called and left a message while we were at church, he was using some kind of alien, old person, little kid voice that made me laugh so hard I almost peed my pants.  Of course I had a little helper in my endeavor:

That is Alden in the background signing his Valentines and of course the little scavengers hoping Kaitlynn will drop something they can eat.

Now I’m off to finish their Valentine presents….I’ll post those later, they are turning out so cute!  I love them!

I did the whole thing…

….for cooking school this week and then deleted it by accident!  Seeing as I have the flu and am not up to doing it again right now, please bear with me.  I will try to get it done again tomorrow!

A really good….

question Alden asked this morning.  While the answer is fairly obvious (no), it was a good question:

 ”Mom, do mailmen take their own mail home?”

 A funny question from Kaitlynn:

The church was having a Superbowl party which Tim and the boys were going to attend until Powell was sick.  Kaitlynn asked: “Are you and the boys still going bowling even though Powell is sick?”  Tim couldn’t figure it out.  She thought the Superbowl party was a super bowling party.

Sorry, I don’t have a good Powell one this week.  He was so sick he hardly said 100 words over four days.  But he is better now!  He and Tim and Alden are going camping tonight in a cavern…very exciting.  Kaitlynn has a slumber party to go to…very exciting.  I have the entire house to myself from 6:00 pm tonight until 10:00 am tomorrow….exciting beyond belief.  It makes me feel kind of like this:

So it’s…

…my dad’s birthday today.    I am a big birthday person.  I am someone who LOVES birthdays and LOVES to celebrate them.  I don’t know, it just seems like it is such a good day to celebrate the life of someone you love.  Yes, you should be letting them know everyday that you love them, but I think it’s nice to reflect on that person and how they have blessed your life for an entire day.

I come from what many call a “broken family.”  To me, it’s just my family.  I really don’t remember it any other way because I was very young when my parents split up.  There was a lot of crap in my childhood; a lot that is best to forget.  But here is what I remember about my father:

• he never added to the crap pile.
• my dad NEVER missed a single time he was able to have us, he was never late picking us up and he always made us the center of his attention while with him.  I think this is amazing because he was a young, good-looking guy who could have been out introducing us to all kinds of women but he didn’t.  He kept our time for us and only two long-term girlfriends (one of whom is now my step-mom) were ever allowed to join in.
• my dad paid his child support.  In a time and age when you hear about so many dads not paying child support, this is worth pointing out.  Want more?  He typically paid MORE than he was ordered, of his own accord, because he wanted to make sure we had everything we needed.
• when I was 12 I got to move in with him.  He was a newlywed and they had every reason in the world to want to be alone for a few years but instead they embraced having us move in and provided a loving, structured home that was a wonderful place to be.
• my dad exposed me to things.  We drove to Alaska from California, we went to Hawaii, lakes, mountains, picking apples, fishing, all over the South…there are pictures of me in front of the Washington Monument, in the middle of fields of gorgeous flowers, by hot springs, on a stuffed moose, on beaches….  He took us to nice restaurants and told us to order whatever we wanted off the menu.  He told me stories about his life and my grandparents’ lives, he tried to teach me about stocks and he definitely taught me about how to be an upstanding citizen.
• my dad was not perfect.  He has done and said things that have hurt.  Each one of them was rooted in his love for me though; of that I am sure.  I am also sure of this: each one has been forgiven and put away where it belongs.

When it comes down to it, I had an amazing father.  I feel so blessed to still have him.  To know that he is 73 years old today and still fit, healthy and sharp as a tack is comforting and inspiring.  He married an amazing woman who has loved us and cared for us for over 30 years now (really amazing since they’ve only been married 26).  She is the perfect fit for my dad.

In the end, I really don’t feel like I come from a “broken family.”  I feel like I have exactly the family I was/am supposed to have.  I think a lot of that has to do with my dad and his ability to swallow his pride when it needed to be swallowed and focus on his children.  I have an amazing father and I just wanted to take this post to honor him.

(I’d give you  more recent photos but it would entail tearing up wedding albums and scrapbook pages so instead, we’ll take a walk down childhood memory lane)

I guess it was…

….time.  Time for my kids to get sick.  They never get sick.  I’m very blessed that way.  But Friday Powell came home with a fever and has slept most of the past three days.  He still isn’t any better.  Today Alden called from school around 1:30.  Guess what?  He has a fever.  Poor little pathetic boys.  I am keeping Kaitlynn away from them.