My Baby

My baby boy turned nine today. It seems absolutely impossible that nine years has passed since his birth! He is getting so tall and I love that he still wants to sit in my lap even though he is way too long for me :)
As part of his "birthday week extravaganza" his teacher asked me to put together a special birthday book for Bennett and come read it to the class. All of the parents have done it for their kids, and I had seen a few, but today was the first time I stayed for the whole "experience". Bennett sat next to me as I read his book and I could tell he was both proud and a little embarrassed, which is okay with me. After I finished reading it and showed everyone the pictures, his teacher asked if any of the students wanted to pray for Bennett. I was overwhelmed at the joyous response and then completely touched when I heard their prayers. It was sooooo sweet! They thanked God for Bennett's friendship and kindness and prayed blessings on his day. It took everything in me not to burst out in tears! As a mom there is no greater gift then seeing your kids showered with love and praise! It made me so thankful for our school and our friends. And not only was he blessed at school, but his day started out with finding a decorated car as he headed out the door to leave this morning. His best buddy came last night to decorate our car and Bennett was definitely surprised! My heart is so full of love not only for my baby boy, but our amazing circle of family and friends who do so much to show us that we are loved!
And since I am now completely balling as I write this I am going to end this post with a heart full of gratitude and thanks ;)

Just another day as a crazy mom

On Friday I almost wrecked my car. Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, but it came close. You see, I had to go the bank and as I was leaving and my mind was in a thousand different places, I happened to see Taylor Lautner and almost crashed my car. Let me remind you that I am a happily married woman who really has no interest in young boys. That being said, when I saw him my mind and body simultaneously focused on finding my cell phone to call my besties and grab a picture instead of driving. Can you imagine what would have happened if I had actually hit a parked car? "I'm sorry officer but it wasn't all my fault, I was distracted by Jacob from Twilight...." To make matters worse, did I mention that the Taylor I saw turned out to be a cardboard cut-out deceptively placed to fool us poor women and cause us to crash our cars? You can stop laughing now, I know I am crazy.

Mammoth

I have been patiently waiting to blog anything until I could tell you all of our amazing Mammoth adventures (yes, I know it was like three weeks ago) and upload all of my beautiful pictures. Unfortunately, the technical gods have not been shining on me lately and I have officially lost all my pics and completely destroyed my memory card for my camera. I am trying really hard not to be overly bummed out by this. I am also trying really hard not to strangle the people at Sammy's camera or the makers of the SD picture card. Apparently what happened to my card is not unusual, because there are thousands of posts online by people who have had similar issues. I will not admit how many suggestions I read through, but sadly must confess that I did try three outrageous Macgyver moves to try to mend my card with no success. So even though I don't have pictures to show and it has been forever since our trip, I will still fill you in on the details.
First of all, I don't know why I was worried that there wasn't going to be any snow. I have never seen so much in my life! My kids were in snow heaven. Bennett has declared that he officially wants to move to Mammoth, and Kendall's favorite new food is snow. We had such a good time sledding and riding the Gondola. No skiing for us (major budget buster - how do people do that?) but we had a ton of fun. And one of the biggest highlights was the gorgeous place we stayed at that had 2 sets of stairs which of course meant free rides for my kids. It is amazing how much fun a staircase can be when you are in slippery snow gear and you are not old enough to feel/realize the damage you are causing to your tailbone. It was definitely a much needed vacay for our family, and I am hoping and praying that we are invited back to do it again someday. I have heard that they are predicting the ski runs will be open until July this year, can you imagine that?

Being Green

My family's green clothes are officially now in the bottom of the laundry basket, where they will probably stay until next St. Patrick's Day. I love green veggies and fruit, like to decorate with shades of green, but cannot pull it off in my wardrobe. And I noticed yesterday, most other people can't either. It is not a super flattering color for very many people. I am sure St. Patrick himself can't help but roll over in his grave every March 17th and think to himself, "I looked much better in blue." I do think it is ironic that we live in a country that thrives on non-conformity (or at least they think they do) and the individual spirit but everyone can be convinced to wear green clothes on a holiday they know nothing about merely on the threat that they might get pinched. Whoever gave that first pinch years and years ago must have given a whopper since we all still fear it now. We should hire that same person to deal with terrorists, we would probably live in a much more peaceable world if we did.
As a side note, I had to go to Costco yesterday because our pantry and fridge were REALLY bare and I saw our old car. Isn't that weird? We traded in our car in August and went down to one family car, and I totally saw our old van - same plates and everything - in the parking lot at Costco. And do you know that my first thought in my little scheming evil brain was, "I wonder if we still have an extra key and we could take it back..." Sad, I know. That sin nature is just ever present, you know?

Must be the Beans

I went to Michaels yesterday to try and find some springtime crafts. I swear that store draws me in just like Target and I can spend forever wandering around getting ideas. At least, that is, when my kids aren't with me. So as I am looking through some of the fake flowers the woman next to me starts talking to me in Spanish. She is an older woman, maybe late 60's, who looked very friendly and was admiring the flowers and noting what a good price they were. Rather than insult her with my spanglish I nodded and smiled and continued my search. She then looked at me rather intently and asked - in english this time- Are you mexican? At that moment I cannot tell you how many things flashed through my brain. Vocab words from AP Spanish class, the time I met my dad's family in Mexico and they asked me how old I was in Spanish and I answered "fine", the stunned faces that met mine when I walked into my first Mensa club meeting. I quickly blurted out no, for fear that she would then expect me to speak to her in Spanish, but then corrected myself and said something profound like, "Well, yeah...my dad is but umm I don't speak spanish umm sorry?" She politely did not laugh in my face but I was totally humiliated. I should add here that I am easily embarrassed and completely hormonal right now. I spent the rest of the day wondering what about me she saw that clued her in to the fact that I am, in fact, half mexican. The blond hair and blue eyes usually throw people off, which is why I spent a great deal of time in high school trying desperately to convince people that I did have some spanish flair in me. Sadly the only thing I could come up with is that I have been eating a ton of beans lately because they are Weight Watcher point friendly and maybe she could smell them on me. Usually in the summer I tan really nicely which can sometimes clue people in but right now I am winter pasty white, so I know that wasn't it. Why do I even spend time overthinking these things? I think I need to give my brain a rest and go make brownies, which I know are not point friendly but they taste really really good.

Shocking!

Considering my young age (ha ha yeah right) I feel like I have seen a lot. I have been witness to several births, as well as watched older loved ones fade into dementia or suffer through illness until they finally found peace in death. I have three kids, which means I have been peed on, pooped on, thrown up on, and suffered through the inevitable grocery store meltdown. As a pre-teen I had a huge love of horror flicks so I watched everything from Ammityville to the Omen, which is probably why I am still afraid of the dark. My reason for stating all of the above is to explain that there are few things that truly shock me. However, at Disneyland this past week, I was definitely dumbfounded. I saw a precious little boy, maybe 2 or 3 years old, in the midst of a meltdown. This, sadly, is commonplace in my home so it wasn't too surprising. Not until the child started beating the crap out of his mother. Seriously. I felt bad but I couldn't help but stare. This little pipsqueak was punching his mom in the face and pulling her hair out of its neat little blond bun. All while the very patient mommy remained quiet, I assume waiting for the child to calm down. I was both shocked and saddened. I know that there are a bazillion different parenting techniques out there and my kids are far from perfect so I know I shouldn't judge people but REALLY? Since when is it okay for our kids to beat up on us? I admire her patience but am truly saddened if she believes that being terrorized by her kid is acceptable. The bigger question for me is when did we stop teaching our kids to respect? Respect parents, adults, friends, fellow human beings. It feels like this is a rare thing to find, which is really sad to me and makes me want to shelter my kids even more. I will say that I have several friends with amazing and kind children, but it is depressing to me how rare that is. Is it wrong to teach our kids politeness, kindness, respect, and caring for others? Are we not teaching it because we aren't doing it ourselves? I feel like when things are tough in parenting, more often people throw in the towel and lower their expectations for their kids. But no one ever said parenting was easy, did they?

Feeling Blessed

Wow, didn't realize how long it had been since checking in with the blog. What an amazing couple of weeks it has been. I have been witness to several answers to prayer lately that continue to remind me that God is present, which is always a good thing for me!
As some of you know, we would be under the category of a "paycheck to paycheck" family. Yes, we have read the books and attended the budget seminars about savings and streamlining budgets blah blah blah and we do the best we can with what we get. We know that for us it is all about choices, and we choose to live in an expensive town on one income so we know that there will always be things that we have to live without. Sometimes, that even includes groceries. Long story short, I have continuously gone to God in prayer that somehow, someway, money would fall from the sky and land in our lap. Low and behold we got an unexpected check in the mail about a week ago. Our insurance company finally recognized a few bills that we had paid last year and actually sent us a refund check - praise God! I know to many people that wouldn't seem like a big deal, but for us it was a huge answer to prayer!
Continuing the praises...Last week we were supposed to go to Disneyland and the Science Center in Los Angeles for some much needed family time. Of course, my two boys ended up with fevers and I was in panic mode. I was shoving Zyrtec, OJ, and vitamins down their throats as fast as I could to no avail. When Thursday morning finally came and we were due to leave all 3 kiddos had fevers and I was struggling to figure out what to do. Knowing that all I could do was give it to God, I started to pray. Actually, the more accurate phrase would be I began fervently begging God to heal my kids. By the time we got to Los Angeles, all three kids were fever free! Their fevers never came back and never turned in to runny noses, coughs, or ANYTHING! Praise God!
One final praise...We have been really trying to fit in as much quality family time as possible knowing that Matt will be gone a LOT this year with conferences, camps, training, and missions trips. The kids really have been wanting to go to the snow, which when you live in Santa Barbara isn't always easy. We are feeling SO blessed that friends are letting us borrow their cabin in Mammoth for part of spring break! The kids will already be out of school, Matt will already be excused from his PE job because there isn't any school so he won't have to request time off, and the best part is it's FREE! I feel like stuff like this never happens to us, but I am counting my blessings while they do. We are hoping there will still be snow, and that the kids won't kill each other on the 6 hour drive, but at least that will make for another fun post :)