Why This May be a part of my Night:



5:45-Leah wakes up from a dream. Consequently, Miss C wakes up as well. I decide I will just get up. Thankfully, the two go back to sleep.

5:50-Weigh myself, and discover I lost 2 more pounds! Think that this has got to be a great day if it starts like this!

8:30-Drop Leah off for her 2nd day of kindergarten.

9:00-11:00-Do some work, discover Mr. C & Miss C have emptied a Carmex container and written with marker all over themselves.

11:00-Try to do dishes, as my dishwasher is not working.

11:03-Discover the C's in a bedroom with diaper cream (retrieved from the top shelf of a closet) spread all over themselves, their clothes, the bed, and the carpet.

11:15-Clean the kids up, and get them in the car to get out of the house.

11:30-Discover I have forgotton my purse at home, and realize there is something in there I need.

11:31-Turn the van around, go back home.

11:45-Retrieve purse, head out again.

12:00-Order two hamburgers from Sonic for the kids, ketchup only. Receive two hamburgers with everything BUT ketchup.

1:30-Return home. NAP TIME!!!

2:30-Receive long-awaited package from Amazon in the mail. Open it, and find $120 worth of Wii games. Weird, since we ordered two books. And we don't have a Wii. Checked the packing slip, realized it belonged to a neighbor two streets over.

3:00-Throw a load of laundry in. I have to do SOMETHING productive today!

3:15-Get kids up, leave to pick Leah up from school.

3:20-Sit in very long car line, and watch my gas tank slowly empty. It flat lines. I start praying. All I need is to hold up a whole line of cars by running out of gas.

3:30-Make it to the school, get Leah! Now to get gas!

3:33-Nearly get hit head on by three teenage girls racing through the neighborhood. I blared my horn, and they blared something else. I felt very old.

3:40-Find the gas station, only to discover that every other pump is out of order. I wait, and am impressed by my van's ability to keep chugging along.

3:43-Finally get gas!

3:55-Stop by neighbor's to drop her Wii games off. She wasn't home, but on her front porch was OUR Amazon box. Weird. So I made the exchange and went home.

4:00-Open the washing machine to put the laundry in the dryer, discover that I washed the clothes with a paper grocery bag. Brown paper residue and chunks COVERED the clothes and the washing machine. Lovely.

4:01-4:45-3 time outs and a white flag of surrender later, Mike finally comes home!

6:00-Suppertime. Surprisingly enough, fairly uneventful!

6:30-Mike fixes dishwasher. Things seem to be coming back to some state of normalcy.

6:39-I finish the blog post. Showers are next, followed by an early bedtime. You know what comes after that. :)

Here's to a more relaxing tomorrow!

New Beginnings

I send my baby off to kindergarten next week. She's beyond excited. I'm beyond emotional. She wakes up each morning asking if today is the day. I wake up each morning thinking, "Oh no, we're one day closer!". I suppose both sides are normal, and truthfully her excitement makes me excited for her too. But my heart, it breaks just a little.

I'm trying not to let her see my emotional side too much, because I want her to be excited and not worry about dear old mom. But the other morning in a quiet moment I looked at her and said, "Oh Leah, I'm going to miss you so much when you are in kindergarten." She looked back at me, and in a calm reassuring manner said, "I know you will, Mom. But I need to go so that I can see how much fun I will have!" In the moment I laughed, and replied that yes, that was true, and that she was going to have all sorts of fun.

But later, it struck me how profound her response was. I thought about how I did the same thing to my parents so often in my growing-up. "I know you will miss me, but I need to go discover, find out, explore, make mistakes, make friends, make accomplishments, make my way...to see how much fun it will be!"

Oh, there's joy in the journey. And my journey has been full of joy. But today, for a moment, I need to ready my heart to let my daughter experience her own journey. And I know that where she goes, she does not go alone. May God bless her and keep her. May he make his face to shine upon her. And give her peace.

What fun it will be!

Sweet Dreams!

For the last five years of parenting I think I've been spoiled. I have been able to get away with saying completely ridiculous things without being taken seriously. But since Leah reached that magical age of FIVE, my ability to get away with this has gone down significantly. However, there are moments when I've reached the end of my rope that I still try to say completely illogical things just to throw her off. Like last night, bedtime. Leah was getting up after trying to sleep for 2 minutes, and kept getting up and getting up. There were noises, monsters, funny things, etc. etc . Finally, after nearly 1 1/2 HOURS of this, I said, "Fine, just sleep in the kitchen! There are no monsters in there!" (I'm sure none of you have ever reached the end of your rope like this....)

Leah looked at me. I thought I had accomplished my goal. To bed she would go! Until...."Okay, Mommy". I looked at Mike in shock, and he just shook his head at me. Leah traipsed into the kitchen with her blanket and bunny in tow, and was going to lay right there on the floor. Mike took compassion on her and brought her a pillow and a blanket. This was her within five minutes, completely out:



That does it. She's getting too smart for me!

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Have you ever seen that movie? My husband thinks it's one of the funniest things he's ever seen, and I can hardly stand it. Why? Because no matter what they do, they can't seem to get it right. I can't stand watching them run into one obstacle after another...it just drives me crazy.

Tonight we had a very "Planes, Trains, and Automobile" kind of night.

It all started a few nights ago when Mike and I were talking about the two of us going out on a date this weekend. Leah calls from the backseat, "What are you two talking about?"

"Daddy and Mommy are going to go on a date this weekend," I replied.

A short pause. And then, again from the backseat, "I think, in this family, that a date means three people should go!"

How could you pass that up? So today, we headed out on our family date. The plan? A quick stop at Walmart, then off to the zoo to take in a new Christmas movie at the IMAX theater. After that, pizza at a place we've never been to on the other side of town. We (thought we) had a $25 certificate that we bought on restaurant.com for $2. Then, home to put up our Christmas tree!

So we left at 3:30, and made a stop at Walmart. Now, you have to understand that Mike hates going into Walmart on a slow day, much less on the Saturday afternoon before Thanksgiving! But we found a parking spot a mile from the entrance and he begrudgingly went in with me. It was a date, after all! So I head right to the thing that we need to buy. They are out of it. Completely. Back another mile to the car, and off to the IMAX.

We walk into the theater and see a bunch of people just sitting around. Strange, but whatever. We go up to the desk, and see a sign: "The IMAX theater is closed due to technical difficulties". Of course it is. But the cashier tells us to check back in awhile to see if it is fixed in time for the 5:00 showing. So we decide to head into the zoo for a little while and find the gorillas and parrots, Leah's favorite animals. Thankfully, they were all alive and well and we enjoyed an hour in a very quiet and empty zoo. Then we went back to check on the theater. Still shut down. "Oh well," I said, "we can just head to the pizza place a little early."

So we walk back to the van. I take out my folder with all of our certificates in it, and what do I find? No certificate! Apparently we had talked about purchasing one but never had. Mike thought maybe we should just drive up there anyway, but I didn't want to if we could first get our hands on the discounted certificate.

Well, our house is too far away, but my sister lives about 15 minutes from the zoo, so we headed over there to use their computer and buy a certificate on there. I get to the website, and find out that this restaurant is only selling $10 certificates, which is probably why we didn't buy one in the first place! We didn't think it was worth it to drive all the way across the city just to save 10 bucks, so we abandoned that idea altogether.

Back to the van. By this time Leah was tired and ready to eat, if not just ready to head home. I still wanted to salvage some bit of this family date, and Mike was just hungry and thirsty. So we drove to our old stand-by restaurant and had supper. It was delicious as always, but not quite part of the adventure that we had hoped.

But there was one part of our date night left! The tree!! We got home, put on some Christmas music, and started pulling the tree out of the box. (Yeah, I don't do real). This tree is a second hand one from my parents and so we haven't used it before. We got all the branches out and Leah was dancing around all excited to finally put it up. Actually, so was I. Mike came in to help (remember, this is a family date!) and says, "Hey, where's the stand?"

So a quick call to my mom told us that the stand is sitting in their porch, three hours away from our house. Of course it is. The "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" curse had reared it's ugly head yet again. I ran to the store to find something there. Nothing. Seriously nothing. And I'm done. I'm not going to drive around this city at 8:00 at night searching for a Christmas tree stand. I'm just not. Bah Humbug.

So our evening ends! The old standby leftovers are in the refrigerator, and the Christmas tree is strewn about our living room. Leah is sad that not only did she not get to watch a movie she also did not get to put up the Christmas tree.

But...we still enjoyed our time together as a family, and Leah was right, sometimes dates are more fun with three.

But, we would like to trade in our "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" kind of night for a "Groundhog Day" one. Because I think we earned a do-over!

Autumn turning into Winter...

The radio station that I listen to has started to play Christmas music 24/7. I wasn't sure I was ready for it but I've found myself enjoying it as I work around the house this week. And I did some Christmas shopping yesterday! So, I decided before I completely switch my brain over to the winter season I better finish up a few fall thoughts on this blog!

I know I left you hanging nearly a month ago. I went hunting for those promised pictures of the third winery but couldn't find any, so perhaps I didn't take any! I'm not sure anymore. However, I have other pictures that will hopefully satisfy any other desires you may have.

We've had a wonderful fall...lots of fun outside and in, and as I write this Mike and Leah are in the backyard raking and jumping in the many leaves that our 4 large trees produce and then dump in the yard.

A few of our adventures are detailed in the pictures below...the first three are of a really lovely trip Leah and I took to the pumpkin patch on possibly the most beautiful fall day ever, and the last one is of our princess on Halloween. A sweet old man answered one of the doors we went to, and said, "Now, what are you supposed to be young lady?" "A princess," she replied. "Oh, my, I had one of those once," he said. "She's 45 years old now!" It was a special moment as for a second I think this precious neighbor had a wonderful memory of his little princess.

Sunday Date

Several weeks ago Mike and I were downtown in the Old Market to celebrate Mike's birthday. As we often do when we are in this part of the city, we spent some time walking through the various art galleries and stores. While in one we picked up a brochure for something called Studio and Vine, and it intrigued us. Wine? Art? Fall colors? Sign me up!

We did a little more research and discovered that "Studio and Vine" was a bus tour through part of the Loess Hills in western Iowa. The bus stopped at three wineries and two artist studios over the course of a Sunday afternoon. We thought it sounded wonderful, and invited our wine club to join us. While we had several people interested, by the time Sunday arrived no one else could go, so it ended up being just a nice day away for Mike and I.

We were a little nervous when we received an email telling us to meet at the senior center in Council Bluffs, but our fears were quickly dismissed when we drove up and saw all varities of ages represented. So our adventure began!

Our first stop was at Sugar Clay Winery, which won the award for the most beautiful area of the day. You may enjoy their wine if you enjoy the taste of dirty socks, but I would probably skip Sugar Clay next time. However, the scenery was beautiful, so I may return with my own wine just to enjoy the area!








Our next stop was King Crossing Winery. After our first experience we didn't hold high hopes, but we were pleasantly surprised. No wine stood out like dirty socks, and there were a few that we would like to try again. The medieval decor was really fun, and the views of the vineyard were gorgeous.









The next stop was an art gallery located in a little barn in the country. While it was quite unassuming from the outside, the photography displayed indoors took my breath away. The art is by John and Debora Scanlan, and it is simply beautiful.

That's all for now...coming soon...more pics, one more winery, and one more studio.

Lame Excuse for a Blog Post...

Yes, I know it's not a real update...but hopefully this will satisfy all curious onlookers until I get my act together enough to post pictures and write about the 5th birthday that someone in our house just experienced. Mike is gone for the weekend so I've been dividing my time between being ultra-productive and fairly lazy, which is just the perfect balance. At any rate, a real post is going to come soon, but for now, I've been tagged!

So...


4 things...
I was tagged by Annette...so here we go!

4 things I was doing 10 years ago:
*Teaching 7th/8th grade in Worthington, MN.
*Adjusting to living life for the very first time on my own, without any roommate.
*I can't remember anything else too exciting! :)
*Nope, still nothing.

4 things on my to-do list for today:
*Clean Leah's toyroom (in progress...)
*Take Leah out for pizza (just got home)
*Do the dishes (done!)
*Read a book (soon!)

4 jobs I have had: (I've had many odd jobs. Mike keeps encouraging me to do a blog series about them. Perhaps I shall...)
*Dental assistant (first job!)
*Dairy Queen
*Cook at a summer camp
*Typed/Read phone conversations between the hearing and deaf/hard of hearing

4 movies I have watched more than once:
*Pretty Woman
*Never Been Kissed
*Shawshank Redemption
*The Princess Bride

4 places I have lived:
*Sioux Falls, SD
*Warwick, NY
*Worthington, MN
*Atlanta, GA


4 places I have been this year:
*Southern California
*Colorado Springs, CO
*Sioux Falls, SD
*Boelus, NE

4 places I want to visit:
*Tuscany
*Sydney
*Disneyworld
*Montreal

4 TV shows I watch:
*Amazing Race
*Monk
*Friends (still!)
*Ace of Cakes

4 things you may not know about me:
*I hate daily cleaning, but I love a big cleaning project. (Which works out well for someone who hates daily cleaning!)
*I love searching for good travel deals on the internet (even when I'm not going anywhere!)
*I love to read a good romantic suspense book...and often do judge a book by it's cover (much to my husband's dismay).
*I just quit one of my two jobs this week...for many reasons, but I am looking forward to having dinner at home with my family more than once a week. Gulp!

Hey, consider yourself tagged if you read this and are in a blogging slump like me!