I Love February

Our favorite daughter has a February birthday! A magical one this year, turning 8 on the 8th. She had a wonderful day celebrating.



Using an idea from the website Pinterest, we decorated the bedroom doors last night with hearts telling the kids all the things we love about them. The kids loved reading them and the day started off much better than most, interesting what a little positive encouragement can do first thing in the morning!




I received the BEST Valentine's gifts this year. Our new dishwasher was installed, I can actually see the countertops after three weeks of handwashing everything and leaving it all out to dry. Stephen also hung the last two curtains in the family room, a point of contention between the two of us for over a year now. Not to mention the sweet love note and box of chocolates he left for me at my desk this morning on his way out of town.

Finding your way

Our precious daughter, it is hard to believe eight years has passed since you

Wet bed

C-note is our best sleeper. Can take a nap and still go to bed on time even at age 6. He can sleep through anything too, vacuuming, dogs barking, phone ringing, he loves his sleep.
This is a good thing, a great thing, except when he asks me why he still wets his bed.

Recently I had j-man and C-note change bunks. Changing wet sheets on the top bunk should be an Olympic sport, I am breathless and sweaty by the time I wrestle clean sheets up there. Even wearing a nighttime diaper, he had wet the bed several nights in a row and I told him he had to sleep on the bottom until he could make it through the night dry for an extended period of time.

This morning he came downstairs and said, "mom, I just don't get how Jackson keeps his diaper dry at night and I can't."

We've tried all the tricks, no drinking past dinner (impossible for our sweatiest, thirstiest child), waking him up before we go to bed to get him to potty, he is just a deep sleeper with a bladder that doesn't speak loud enough to his brain.

I know he'll outgrow this phase and I tried to convince him of that, but I could feel his disappointment. As if we needed yet another thing around here in which the boys are competing.

Staying on top of things

Haven't kept up with my post a day, as it has been an interesting week.
What I have learned:

While I was almost counting myself out of training and running in the St. Patrick's Day marathon, listening to good advice, icing, ibuprofen, lower mileage and more rest have me back on track without an injured knee. 17.5 mile training run and no knee pain!

I can clean up a disastrous diarrhea explosion from the youngest child in 5 minutes flat so as not to miss picking up the older children from their church club.

The black lab needs some sort of Eating intervention, as I helped the youngest shower after the above mentioned incident, the lab thought it would be helpful to clean the child's dirty pants. I have never screamed so loud in my life and I gag still, just thinking about it.

The oldest is very excited about having a cat-themed birthday party with a few friends. She has started decorating by taping cat whiskers and ears all over the house. When researching for the party, looking for game ideas, I learned to type cat-themed parties and not just cat parties. Or you get websites with pictures like above.

There is so much more to the Joe Paterno story than the mass media shared, surprised?! There is no doubt that man died of a broken heart after hearing how much he did to get Sandusky fired and off of campus. My dislike for journalists and politicians grows, one in the same.

After an aggressive incident between our rescue pup and the lab, and a long talk with a behavioral specialist the rescue group set up, we understand Lucy more and how to help her. Always great to have the right tools and understanding of a situation like rescuing an older dog.

Giving up Coca Cola is hard.

One of those days

Drove 45 minutes to an interview that had to be rescheduled. Since the kids had a day off from school and were rushed out of the house to make the interview, I decided to surprise them and take them to a bouncy house that had free play. Free play was full. Came home to a dishwasher repairman informing me we are better off purchasing a new one, parts and labor to fix our current machine would be just as much. Spent the next hour washing dishes as the dishwasher decided to break the day we had company and lots of fun football food.

Just going to have days when it feels like everything that can go wrong will.

But today I also snuggled with my healthy kids, my knee wasn't in any pain, my house was warm, our bellies are full and right now the house is quiet except for a snoring pup.

Ray Finkle

Will Baltimore need the Pet Detective to solve the case of the missing Raven? Billy Cundiff may go down in history as the true life Ray Finkle.
Granted, there were multiple plays that could have won or lost the game, unfortunately the last missed field goal will be forever etched in our minds as the season ending for 2011.

The game changer

It takes time to build friendships.
Acquaintances are easy, find a hobby and you immediately have people to talk to, meet with once in awhile. But deep friendships take time and commitment and not many people make/have time for that any more nor are they willing to put themselves out there, to take chances on what may or may not come of it.

After Stephen and I married, we started attending a church in San Diego that we really liked. Thought we might find some "couple" friends there, so we attended a class for young married couples.

When asked a little bit about our backgrounds, Stephen and I, along with one other couple, were the only ones in the room that did not come from missionary families, nor did we have the Bible memorized from front to back. We felt isolated and kind of rejected, looked down upon.

The other couple felt the same way we did. We sought each other out at church (never going back to the young married group) and we started doing things together. Hockey games, seeing a movie, having dinner at one another's homes.

One night the husband knocked on our door, he was alone. They were coming over for dinner and we didn't quite understand why the wife wasn't by his side. The husband asked if I would go talk to the wife in their car, they were in the middle of a disagreement.

Wife and I sat in their car and talked for a long time. She confided in me, cried to me, that night was a game changer in our friendship. From that night forward, we knew we could count on one another, we had each other's backs. Through thick and thin, our friendship would endure.

Today I am reminded of that night that wife took a leap of faith to let her guard down and talk openly and honestly about the difficulties of marriage, to open up to an almost perfect stranger, and not in a needy way, but transparent, asking for a friendship to help her through a difficult moment and continue on that journey for years to come.