signing off.... for now

I've been dreading this decision, but I finally decided to put the ol' blog on the chopping block.

Circumstances simply don't allow me to be a good blogger right now. And lately I feel like I'm starting to become the "jack of all trades, but master of none" as the saying goes. My life is much different now than it was 4 years ago when I started this blog. There are aspects that require more time and attention than ever before. Specifically: my job as a freelance designer, my family, my home, and my own health and well-being.

I'm sad because I enjoy blogging. It's my journal and it's been so fun to share a window to my life with my friends and family who are far away. At least I'll be able to keep in touch with most of you via Facebook. And posting my FB status is much less time-consuming since they only allow a certain number of characters. (Hmmm... is there a way for Blogger to limit the number of characters you type? That would help me manage my blogging time!)

My blog will still be here, and I'll know when someone posts a comment, so you can still contact me that way. And hopefully someday, when my kids are less dependent, and when my house and life are in better order, I'll be back.

:)
 

la vida loca

It's been too long since my last post... again. It's not my fault. My life is like a car with a broken accelerator. I'm only allowed to go 15 mph or 75 mph. Nothing in-between.

*****

Why does everything always happen at once? That's what happened last weekend. There were kids costumes to finish, two Halloween parties to go to, shopping to do, appetizers and pie to make...

Our ward Trunk-or-Treat party on Saturday.

... and the primary program was on Sunday. It was a daring move to do it the Sunday after the trunk-or-treat party and before Halloween. But the program was wonderful. And Josie actually stayed on the stand of her own free will for the first 20 minutes! She didn't sing, but didn't cry, either. Amazing!

I was sure Josie would have one of her performance-related breakdowns. It was her speaking part that finally did it. She hid behind the podium when it was her turn. The congregation got a good chuckle from that. She came down and sat by us. But then Jon said he would take her to McDonald's if she went back up. She didn't walk, but RAN back to the stand and told her Sunbeam teacher in an excited voice,

"My poppa is taking me to MCDONALD'S!"

Hey... if it prevents public emotional breakdowns, it's fine with me!


That same weekend, I found out about a church-owned farm that allows members to pick as many tomatoes as they want (for free!) before harvest, but it had to be done before the 31st. Well, I certainly couldn't pass that up! Especially since my garden did so horribly this year.

I went on Saturday morning and came home with 9 grocery sacks full of softball-sized tomatoes. It didn't seem like too many when it was in the back of my station wagon. But it was much different once I got them into my kitchen. I questioned my sanity. Jon questioned my sanity. 

You get a sense of how huge this field is when you see how small the cars are on the other side. 

This is one of the things I love about living in California.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon and evening canning whole tomatoes in pint jars. And doing 6 loads of laundry. (why, oh why did laundry day have to coincide with the tomatoes??)

The next morning we took Josie to McDonald's as promised, and then to her preschool Halloween party at the park.

With her classmates

Our attempt to get a good picture of them together in costume. Josie only makes goofy faces and poses these days. 

Pink hair!

Just FYI, that cheap pink hairspray stuff will get on EVERYTHING your child's hair touches. Consequently, we threw Josie in the bathtub almost immediately after we got home.

That's a balloon snake she got at the party.

Then I went grocery shopping, got some quart-sized canning jars, went home, bottled more whole tomatoes, carved pumpkins with Josie, sent Jon off to work his nightshift, made dinner, watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with the kiddos, cleaned the kitchen, handed out candy to trick-or-treaters, put kids to bed, made two batches of salsa and bottled them, and put a batch of tomatoes in the food dehydrator. Needless to say, I was dead after all that.

But the insanity wasn't over! The next day was Tuesday, and I had to prepare a sewing activity for Wednesday night Activity Days. (For those of you readers who don't know, Activity Days is a twice-monthly activity for 8-11 year-old girls in my church.)

I went fabric shopping with the kids at the only place in our small town that sells it.... Walmart. Can I just say... Walmart has the ugliest fabric, ever? After leaving the store empty-handed, I realized I locked my keys in the car. And there was a scary, crazy guy wandering around the Walmart premises, yelling randomly at people. So, after getting yelled at by Mr. Crazy Guy, I walked back into the store and called Jon's cell phone about 5 times, trying to wake him up. Poor Jon had to get out of bed and drive across town to unlock my car.

Tuesday morning is story time at our local library, so I took the kids there next. Then it was home again, lunch, naptime for Jack, more laundry, client projects, dinner, and then my second attempt to find cute fabric. We drove to another town so we could go to JoAnne's. Luckily, I found some nice Thanksgiving-themed fabric for our potholders. After the kids went to bed, I spent two hours rotary-cutting and ironing about 70 squares of fabric on my family room floor.

The next day was Wednesday. I put the last sack of tomatoes in the dehydrator, sewed a potholder, worked on client projects, played with kids, and had a fun/chaotic sewing activity with the girls.

Oh... and did I mention I've had the worst cold during all of this? Oh yeah.

I'm just now starting to recover from last week. The adrenaline let-down and this winter-ish weather made me want to do nothing but sit in front of the TV and drink hot chocolate today. I'm so excited for the holidays! I just hope that I don't have a million things collide in the same week for a while.


But the best thing about this crazy week was:

My new nephew! Isn't he a doll? He was born on Wednesday Nov. 2nd, 3 weeks early, and just one day after Jack's birthday. I have a feeling they will be good buddies. 

essentials

Last weekend I abandoned my family for two whole days (gasp!) and drove to Reno with some of my best girlfriends from our former ward to attend a Time Out for Women conference.

Can I just tell you how much I love these ladies? I miss them so much! 

There were so many great speakers at the conference. So many uplifting and encouraging words. But one speaker in particular stood out to me. She talked about life's difficulties and how to focus on the essentials: prayer, scripture study, family, you get the idea.... And when we do the essentials first, we find time to do all our other tasks.

Jon's mom came for the weekend and helped Jon out with the kids. They went to Fairytale Town in Sacramento.

I've decided to try it out, being the task-oriented, OCD person that I am, and see if I can actually get more done. And, I added one more thing to my essentials list: getting to bed earlier. I've been a night owl for Way. Too. Long. and it's killing me. I don't want to be a grumpy, sluggish, sleep-deprived mommy anymore. But at the same time, I don't want to let my house go to H-E-L-L or not get my freelance work done because I stop staying up late to finish it. 

Well, I've gone to bed before 11:30 (yeah, that's early for me, folks) and read my scriptures (which I've always been horrible at) for the past few nights. So far, it hasn't affected my ability to get things done. I think staying up late was making me too tired during the day to be my best, most effective self. I know... duh!

Grandma Glenna was so happy to meet Jack.

The real test will be the next few days while Jon is working his 12 hour shifts. It's always harder to get things done when I'm a quasi-single mom. But I have high hopes!

heigh-ho, heigh-ho... it's off to work he goes

This is always the scene at our front door when Jon leaves for work:

Josie always asks, "Can I watch Daddy drive away?" She can't get enough of him. Neither can our cat, apparently! (But I think she's most likely hoping one of the kids will accidentally open the door so she can escape this madness.)

Yep, he's pretty popular around here. And that's just how it should be.

hunger strike

Remember my post about Josie and her ultra-picky eating? Things are not getting better. And today, Josie took it to a whole new level of frustrating.

*****

It all started yesterday when Josie, being her normal, picky-self, chose not to eat her lunch or dinner. We had leftover black bean soup for lunch and homemade chicken pot pies for dinner. Chicken pot pies for heaven's sake! But she wouldn't touch it.  I stuck to my guns, and didn't let her eat other things. And Josie didn't seem to care.

This morning, I made this lovely thing for breakfast (which was awesome, by the way Natalie!) and thought Josie would be all over it since she hadn't eaten since the previous morning. But something was wrong with her when she woke up. I found her lying on the bathroom floor. I asked her what was wrong, and she said her legs weren't "working" and they hurt. That scared me a little. She's never had that complaint before. I thought maybe it was just growing pains.

She said she wanted to get a cup of water from the bathroom sink, so I got her a cup and left the room to check the oven. She started bawling. I went back to the bathroom to see what the matter was and found her crying, holding the cup under the barely-trickling faucet. She knows how to turn on the faucet, so I didn't understand why she was having so much trouble.

I filled her cup and tried to get her to sit down and eat breakfast. She refused to eat and told me she wanted to lay down because her stomach hurt. Oh great... I thought, She's got the flu or something. Josie left the table to use the bathroom. After about 5 minutes or so, she still hadn't come out. I went to check on her and she was laying on the floor in front of the toilet. What the heck...? She wanted to go back to bed.


I helped her into bed and took her temperature, which was normal. What was going on? I was starting to get really worried. Josie hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours and she wasn't acting like her usual self.

Thinking she was most likely ill, I decided it was more important to get some food in her belly than make her eat the pear crumble. So I cooked up some bacon and eggs for her (Josie's favorite breakfast). After she ate them, it was like watching a wilted flower spring back to life! She started playing with her toys and doing normal Josie-things. I asked her how she felt. No tummy ache... no leg pains. She was fine!

Good grief.

I don't think she was faking at all. I truly believe she was having hunger-related aches and pains. I've always been told that "kids will eat when they're hungry", but Josie would rather die than eat my food, apparently! Leave it up to Josie to defy the laws of childhood.

And after all that, the stupid cycle started all over again! She refused to eat lunch, and by about 4 p.m. today she was begging for dinner. I still had some of that yummy chicken pot pie in the fridge, so that was it. She didn't want to eat it, yet she kept complaining about how hungry she was. My blood pressure was going through the roof at that point. I made her sit down next to me at the table and I spoon-fed her a few bites of the pie. She was crying... I was crying (although, I think my emotions were partially due to PMS), but she finally ate the darn thing. Ugh!

I am so sick of this! It's been months and I feel like I'm losing this battle.

What concerns me the most is her weight. Her preschool teachers take the students' height/weight measurements at the beginning and end of the school year. In August of last year Josie weighed 30 pounds. Sometime in March or April is when all these food-hating shenanigans started. In May of this year she weighed 35 pounds. Now she weighs 34. At this rate, Jack is going to pass her up in no time.

I'm about an inch away from giving up and letting Josie eat as many hot dogs and pizzas as she wants. Because what's worse? diabetes or starvation??

air show

Hey locals,

Did you know there's an air show at the Livermore municipal airport every October? I didn't.

Did you know it's not crowded at all and you can easily get a good view of the planes?

Did you know that kids love planes? Of course you do.

And best of all, did you know that admission ad parking are free?

Ya' gotta love free kid's entertainment!

I wish I had known about this two years ago! Josie had a blast watching the planes take off and do tricks, and she had a blast with her little friend, Bryce.

They had a variety of vintage war and passenger aircraft. It's not a huge show, but that's kind of what I liked about it.

She also got a free foam airplane toy-thingy. She and Bryce "flew" around the tarmac with them the majority of the time. So fun.

Mmmmmmmm....

At least one of our children enjoys eating:

no pictures today...

...but I want to say a few, mostly unrelated things:

1. Jack has the best little boy personality in the world. Yup, he does. Proof, you ask? He fell out of his stroller onto the pavement while we were visiting the zoo last Saturday, and got a nice, purple goose egg on his forehead. He cried for about 30 seconds. And then he endured another 2 hours walking around the zoo, during his usual nap time, no less. And he didn't fuss one bit. (I just have to brag about it.)

I remember being so surprised at how little Jack cried right after birth. It couldn't have been more than a minute or two. I don't know how I got such a calm, mild-mannered child.

2. A word of advice: If you ever find an incredible, spectacular deal on craigslist, drop everything you're doing and go get whatever it is immediately. Even if you're not sure how you will get it home. I missed out on the used furniture score of the century a few days ago because I didn't think I could pick it up right away. I could have, actually, but didn't have the forethought to figure out how. I'm still mad at myself over it. The good news is I got a similar piece of furniture off craigslist the next day. The bad news is I paid five times as much. Lesson learned.

3. Jon is the best husband in the world. He drove 50 miles (each way!) to pick up aforementioned piece of furniture. Just for me.

4. I think I'm finally submitting to the fact that I will never have time to do it all. And I'm learning to enjoy my time with my kiddos instead. It's not an easy thing for me and my OCD tendencies. The kitchen floor hasn't been mopped in a month. My vegetable garden is empty and probably will be for a long time. But oh well! My kids are small and cuddly for just a nanosecond in the eternal scheme of things. I want to enjoy playing with them and quit thinking, "what do I need to do next?" the entire time. I'm still slightly aggravated about my messy house, but only slightly. That is an improvement!

5. The Autumnal Equinox is tomorrow. We're only a week away from October. I was so tempted to put up my fall decorations today, but it's been so. dang. HOT! Mid-nineties all week! It just didn't feel right.

California seasons go something like this:

Spring - April-July
Summer - August-November
Fall - December (I raked leaves on Christmas Eve last year! Ugh!)
Winter - January-March

Come on, California, get your seasons straight.