31/365

 

 

Today was a great day.  The kids and I spent most of the day out of the house which was so nice!  I hosted a Scentsy party for my friend Amy but had it over at her house just in case our house needed to be shown.  (It wasn't)  After the party the kids and I went and picked up Pizza and headed down to my friend Bonnie's house to have supper with them.  After that we all headed over to the bowling alley to meet up with Gale and her girls for a fun night of bowling.  Sunday nights it is only $1 per game/person to bowl or $5 for everyone for an hour.  There were 9 of us.  It was so much fun!  The kids love it and they LOVE Gale's girls so it was nice to sit back and just enjoy the evening.  I am thinking that we may try to do this as often as we can.  It was just so much fun!  Nights like this make me really appreciate the friends I have here.  I am going to be so sad to leave them.  They are the only thing that is getting me through this with the least little bit of sanity!  After tonight I feel refreshed and ready to face another week without Jacob being here.

 

These are the people who keep me sane...I thank God that they are in my life!

  

Aren't they sweet!

  

Jackson did SO MUCH better this time.  No crying and on his first try he hit 9 pins without even hitting the bumper guards we had in the lane.  He was so happy!

  

  

Tyler's unique style.  This kid keeps me so entertained.  I have to say what a good boy he was today when everything else was totally crazy during my Scentsy party.  The only time he got irritated was when I didn't feed him pizza fast enough tonight.  He was HUNGRY at 4:30 and told me all about it!

  

  

Wishing...hoping...thinking...praying.  Please let my ball make it all the way down to the pins.  :)

  

  

And now we wait.

  

This was Skylar's first time bowling.  She did great!

  

  

When you are 3 you have a lot of time to kill between when you throw the ball and when the ball actually hits something.  Jaci insisted on sitting and clicking her feet together and made Skylar join in.  Notice the ball still rolling for the pins.

  

Nothing but a happy face tonight!

  

  

Just relaxing.

  

Jaci made Erin sit with her.  Gale's girls are so amazing and so wonderful to my children.  They helped the kids bowl and I got to sit back and take pictures.  Erin's job was making sure Jaci's ball would get down the lane.  This usually meant she had to give it a little kick to get it going.  This time Jaci got her first spare.  (Thanks to Erin)

30/365

Today has been a really rough day for us all.  The kids woke up early...everyone was grumpy.  We worked to get the house clean hoping it would be shown...it wasn't.  We went to a movie with screaming kids (not my own) and the theatre was messed up so the lights kept coming on and then the movie stopped playing.  We left the movie less than 1/2 way through because it was messed up and then I had 3 screaming kids.

Not a good day...especially when it was supposed to be a fun outing. 

It's just been one of those days but a bubble bath fixes everything!  The kids took a really long bath and got bubbles everywhere.  They had fun though. 

I am watching My Sister's Keeper.  I figured that since I have been on the verge of crying all day long I might as well give myself a good reason to cry.

After the movie is over I am heading up to take a bubble bath.  Hopefully it will make me feel better too.

It sure worked for these little monkies!

Watching the bubbles drip off of her arm...she did this for a LONG time.

29/365

Today it was cold here and we enjoyed just staying in. I slow cooked a roast today and it made the house smell so wonderful. (and it was delicious!) It was the perfect cold weather day. Tonight the kids and I played some Wii and watched a movie. Tyler wanted to sit in my lap and snuggle most of the movie which is rare for him. He has his spot on the couch and he is perfectly content so snuggle up in his corner alone most of the time. He still isn't feeling great so he isn't quite acting like himself. I am ready for him to be off of these steroids because if he isn't laying down feeling terrible he is bouncing off the walls and demanding food. It is one extreme to the other and it is wearing me out. I can only imagine what it is doing to his little body.

I am hoping for a good weekend with a lot of house showings but I fear that the cold weather will keep people in. We'll see what happens. Jacob is heading out to one of his friends places this weekend. I know he looks forward to getting out of the hotel room. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

I played around with black and white pictures again today.  I find it hard to get them just right to capture the sparkle in the eyes and sometimes think they look too harsh.  Personally I usually perfer color because I love a splash of color and eyes that pop but so many others prefer black and whites so it is something I need to work on for our business. 

Jaci fixing her hair in the bathroom today.  She will grab her brush and run off to fix her hair.  Such a girl!

This is NOT the Hook 'Em sign...It is the Rock and Roll sign.  Tyler has been doing this ever since his Great Uncle Darren was here and showed it to him.  I was not happy the first time he did this and when I asked him about it he said "No Mommy...It's Rock and Roll!"  Thank goodness...I was starting to worry that living here close to all these T-sips was rubbing off on him!

Of course Jackson panics when he sees that and has to flash us the Gig 'Em sign!  Rest assured we are raising good little Aggies in our house.  :)

28/365

It is amazing to me how I can't even go to the bathroom by myself...yet I am lonely.
It is amazing to me how all day long I hear constant chatter and non stop talking...yet I long for conversation.
It is amazing to me how my children seem to know when I am really busy and need to get things done and that is when they need me the most and want me to hold them.
It is amazing to me how I can just want to be left alone but I don't really want to be.

I know that one of these days my children will be teenagers and they won't want to spend every moment right under my feet...and I will miss it.
I know that one of these days my children will be teenagers and no matter how hard I try to talk to them they won't be interested in talking to me...and I will miss it.
I know that one of these days my children won't want to sit and snuggle up with me at the worst possible time...and I will long to hold them in my arms no matter how crazy things are.

And I also know that being apart from my husband has made me have a new appreciation for what we have together...and I miss him.

I am trying to remind myself of these things on days like today when every little thing is a HUGE battle. This is temporary and all too soon it will all be over.

(The original plan was to make homemade Chicken and Dumplings...my pantry had other ideas.  Supper tonight was frozen TV dinners...It has just been one of those days!)

27/365

Another day...another trip to the pediatrician. The verdict is that Tyler now has pneumonia. It doesn't really surprise me. He was sounding pretty bad. She thinks that the headache is from all of the medications he is on. We are starting to taper him off of the steroids (thank goodness!) so I guess we will see if that helps ease up the headache. We are all tired of going to the pediatrician and going to the pharmacy. Our bank account is tired of it as well. Ugh! She went ahead and checked out the other 2 who sound terrible as well and said that if they don't improve in the next 2 days to call and she would call them in something. They didn't sound as bad as Tyler but Jackson has been on one round of antibiotics for bronchitis with little improvement.  I am just so glad that she isn't going to make us come back up there for the other two if they get worse.  We have been to the pediatrician 3 times in 6 days and I am just waiting for them to pick up something else while there.  We need to get this knocked out because with 3 kids coughing ALL NIGHT none of us are sleeping very well. It is really making the days LONG!

This morning Jaci and Tyler were in the playroom just laughing and playing so well together. Pretty soon they came running up to me with blankets shoved in their shirts (as well as Zhu Zhu pets and Tyler's camera)and wearing princess dress up shoes. (Tyler is really going to hate me for this later in life!) They were pretending to be fat...not pregnant. Next thing you know Jaci grabs Tyler's hand and says "come on Loyd". Loyd is my mom's boyfriend and he does have a bit of a belly. I thought it was so funny (and completely random) of them to be playing around like that. Not sure about Tyler and the dress up shoes though. These kids drive me crazy most days but they also bring me so much joy and laughter. Makes it all worth it!
 

Tyler is really going to hate me later in life for this...

Jacob is probably going to really hate me right now for letting him do this...and taking pictures of it!  LOL

Someone talked me into ice cream while at Wal-Mart.

It made everyone happy after a long day.

Love them!

26/365

Today I am so thankful for this beautiful weather we have been having.  It has really helped to keep us all in a much better mood because we are able to get out and get some fresh air.  The weather is supposed to turn nasty starting later tomorrow and on through Saturday so we made the most of it this evening by getting out and riding bikes after we got home from Jaci's dance class.  Jackson wasn't too happy about bike riding because he wanted to play in the back yard but I figured the exercise would do us all good.

I wanted to ask you all to say a prayer for Tyler.  He just isn't feeling well at all.  His cough is getting worse and he has been complaining about having a bad headache since Sunday.  I'm not sure what is going on with him but I'll be calling the pediatrician in the morning because something isn't right.  I know the steroids he is on are making him crazy but they should also be making him feel better not worse.  This bothers me to no end so please keep him in your prayers.  I hate that he has to struggle with this.

I'm off to bed to snuggle with my little guy.  He is kind of getting used to sleeping in my bed and while I have never been a fan of having my kids sleep in bed with me I am actually enjoying this.

I LOVE this picture of them.  They were playing so well together!

Look mom...No hands!

Jackson set up cones for them to ride through...notice how close together they are.

No problem...I can ride through them.

I have been trying to get this picture for awhile now and have been playing with my camera settings to get it.  Notice how you can see the motion in the background but the bike and Tyler are in focus.  I love that I finally got it!  This is part of what this 365 photography challenge was about...trying new things and pushing yourself!

Jaci would start to peddal really fast and then lift her feet up and ride like this.  A neighbor kid or ours does this and I HATE that our kids copy him.  Jackson and Jaci are both doing this.

Eating a Red Velvet cupcake that Gale brought over for the kids.  They LOVED them!  Tyler started feeling really bad while eating his so I got to finish it off.  :)

Playing with his lizards in the rocket.