Spring Break Staycation!

My husband is...pretty much amazing.  I was begging for a vacation for spring break. I begged and pleaded. I NEED camping. I NEED Vegas. I NEED, I NEED, I NEED...blah blah blah. Turns out what I needed, was my husband :) JD decided that since our lives were boring, consisting of school and work and kids, kids, kids...he would jazz up our week. A declaration was made: It will be a week filled of fun in St George!

Sunday after church we went for a family walk up to a pond and fed the ducks and fish. Those fish are GI-gan-tic. We are talking 2 foot long gold fish. CRAZY.
When we got home, we played ourselves a rousing game of Build It Sorry. And, may I say, Morgan didn't seem too sorry to keep kicking my sorry butt back to home.
Monday, after working on the Motorcycle, we went to the Wildlife Animal Museum. We had so much fun, and my kids have seriously asked to go back 3 times a week since then.

Gotta love my boys :)

Mom, do you SEE these animal tracks?

Ian never learned how to turn the binoculars the right way :)

So many scary bears. Everywhere. We should scream. Okay! (we didn't actually scream, as that would disrupt the museumish atmosphere)

Ian was obsessed with this fox. He just kept screaming, "Eat! Eat 'im! Eat him! He...EAT... TWEET TWEET!!!!"

I still am not sure if I believe this thing exists. It looks like a fraggle.

Oh my family is perfect...wouldn't you say?

Alright, so then, we came home and spent some time with Morgan on her bike. I am going to put up a post on that all for itself, because, hello, huge accomplishment.

Tuesday, JD had to actually be responsible- poo- and go to work. But before he did, we managed a picnic at the park for lunch.

We had a few other fun little outings throughout the week, and just a lot of family time, which is what I was really wanting anyway.

We finished up the week with the airshow, which the kiddies thought was awesome. Ian still loves, "Jettttt planes"

"He's upside down, Mom! He IS UP-SIDE-DOWN!"

The "copter-plane"

Okay, so maybe we didn't actually go to the airshow. Maybe we went to a church that was like a half mile away and free. But hey, my kids got to ride their bikes when it got boring :) And this is Morgan talking herself through a risky maneuver :)

She was so proud of herself :) And, as you can see, we are not the only church-user air show stalkers.

Ian kept laying his trike down on it's side (which took a lot of effort) so it could be on it's side like Morgan's.

The kiddos watching the planes

I just love him.

My favorite plane of the day :)

All in all, it was a great week. My family is all I really need.

Right now JD is playing his new Zelda video game he got for his birthday and the kids are sitting with him. Ian keeps randomly tackling him, and JD "sits" on him while Ian laughs like a maniac. Morgan is loving the chance she has to sit right by her Daddy and talk about the pointless silly game. They are having fun together and I just get to watch. It's a perfect moment :)

An Epiphany en route to Fast Food

We had a rough day today. One of those really, really, outrageously draining, incredibly and ridiculously rough days.

It didn't have anything to do with the kids- at first. But of course, as my day got worse, and my attitude changed, theirs did too.

I basically ended up ignoring them for most of the day while I sat around thinking about what in the world we are going to do. We took our truck into the mechanic because it was blowing white smoke- and several quotes later- we are looking at a $4500 repair. 4,500 Dollars. Like I said, I spent most of my day just caught in this in between place- the place that I go when I try to not think about something and then I just end up thinking about it entirely in a trance where everything else only half way gets done. Let's be honest, if 50% of the stuff around here that needed done today actually got done, then it's a miracle.

I turned into the mom who pushes her kids away from her legs with a "not now" while they are just begging for a little attention. And then there's the amazing little wonders that children turn into when they go past the begging and turn into terrors who will, under any circumstances, get your attention.

All day long I felt completely out of control and really quite angry. We did the right thing with our truck- we tried to sell it. When it didn't sell, we paid it off 2 years before the loan was up. We did the right thing- and now the truck we paid a ridiculous amount of money for in the first place, the vehicle that is supposed to be reliable- is costing us more than the neon did 5 years ago. We did everything right- this shouldn't happen. When we lost our house and were drowning in credit card debt, we paid them off and we clawed our way out of the gigantic hole of debt to keep that truck. And now it wants another $4500 dollars. I think angry might be a bit of an understatement when I say that's how I have felt all day.

About 20 minutes before Morgan's bedtime I decided to throw reason and responsibility out the window and go get some french fries because I thought (and apparently I have some sort of psychological need for food to make everything better) that I needed them. I loaded the kids up and as I was putting Morgan in the truck she started whining. Why? Because she likes to sit on the side of the car with the gas cap and she was sitting on that side, but she didn't sit on that side LAST TIME and now was a good time to have the breakdown about the injustice in the world since she didn't get to sit on that side before. I just couldn't handle it anymore. I have real problems here and she is crying about THAT? I slammed the door and almost went back into my house to just leave her out there because I couldn't handle any of it anymore.

I didn't do that though, I climbed into the car and apologized. I held her hand to help her stop crying because she was so afraid of me and my anger that she was literally sobbing. I felt horrible, much worse than before I slammed the door, and I just got so much more angry at our truck. At paying it off and then having this huge smothering bill put before us not even 2 weeks later. It isn't right. It isn't controllable. And it isn't fair.

And then I realized, that I was right. The truck isn't controllable. And no, I still don't think it's either right or fair. But I do know something that I have heard a million times and never really applied to my own life- my circumstances do not determine who I am.

I am a good mom. I am a good wife. I try my hardest to make the right decisions and when something like this comes up, I can control myself. I can't control the truck, and I can't control the cost of the stupid injectors or the fact that our truck lost it's value to consumers when everything in the economy went to crap. But that's the economy, and that's the truck....and this is me.

I have 2 beautiful children who deserve my time and affection. I have an amazing husband who works hard to keep me happy, and our children clothed and fed. He deserves to come home to a wife who acknowledges that and supports him as best as she can through times like these. I have the family I was born into, and the one I married into who care about me and who are generous and loving. I love to see my kids laugh. I love to read. I love to go on bike rides with my family. Just because this thing with the truck is happening to me, it doesn't make any of those things any less true.

I really hope this isn't a 4,500 dollar lesson that I had to learn. Hopefully we can figure out some way to make this easier to handle. But I am thankful for that moment of clarity that reminded me of who I really am.

And this girl, she doesn't let stuff like this get her down. :)

Well, thank you for that.

I was just sitting here and Morgan walked over to the piano and started plunking around on it. She noticed that one of the keys is a little scratched up (honestly they are all in pretty bad shape :) And she said, "Hey Mom, how did this happen to this key?"
"What do you mean?"
"How did it get these little scratches?" she asked.
So I said, "I don't really know"

"Oh. I bet I know, Mom. I bet you scratched it with those pokeys you have. Those pokeys in your underarms."

"Uhhhhh, that's one idea, but I'm pretty sure my arm pit hair couldn't scratch the keys on a piano."

"Huh. I bet they could." And away she went, onto her next task to decide what my arm pit hairs may have destroyed.

Just a little thing

A while ago we were just out running errands and we spotted a hot air balloon. We didn't really have anything else to be doing so we pulled over into a parking lot and spent a little bit of time watching it. It was so fun and the kids were enthralled. Morgan was so curious about how it works and what the fire does and Ian would get a little distracted and start trying to climb up the back windshield (since we all just sat on the trunk of the neon) but all you had to say was "Where's the balloon" and he would immediately whip around saying "Boon! Boon!" and find that puppy floating in the sky. Eventually Ian got tired of it and wouldn't quit climbing the car so we gave up on it, but it sure was fun while it lasted :)

Rain is Falling All Around

Since we don't have a tree skirt, I always put some of the fluffy batting under our tree. I kind of like it in my own ghetto way, because it's the only snow we see around here. Anyhow, I will NOT be using it next year because this year it ended up ALL over my house. But this particular use of it made me laugh. Morgan rounded up some pencils and stuck them in the bottom of some poofs of the stuff and her and Ian spent a good hour gallivanting around the house singing about rain clouds and making it rain on me :)

Neeeeeeiiigggh!

Ian loves anything and everything to do with horses. He is such a crack up. He likes to grab the bottom hem of his shirt, or the top of his pants and gallop around the house saying, "Gidup! Neeeeiggggh!" like he is holding onto the reigns of the craziest horse this side of the Mississippi :)

About a month ago I made some brownies and I gave him the spoon and this is what followed. I was laughing so hard, his personality is just so funny and quirky. He makes me laugh with all the silly little things his growing boy mind comes up with!