Monday, September 30, 2013

Weekend Recap

The boys discovered ducks at a pond.






I am so surprised at how much they loved watching the ducks. Christopher cried and screamed when we pulled him away. Dominic kept asking for "ducks? duckies? water??".

We left the ducks and went to Confession at the Parish of our old pastor who we miss so much. Well, Daddy got to go to Confession, the Church was very old and very echo-ey and the boys were extremely loud so we went out to the car to wait.




Which is, of course, one of their favorite things to do so there was much fun had by all.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. Jason has had a toothache for a while (prayers appreciated) and it was compounded with a headache this weekend so he spent the morning resting. The boys watched Finding Nemo 3.5 times and I did lots of laundry.

It's funny, weekends like this, that might seem mundane and lazy, are often my favorite weekends. Where we enjoy just being together and enjoy family time.

Oh! We also picked up some Halloween costumes; Dominic is going to be a pirate and Christopher will be a parrot. So excited for the cuteness!

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Four Years

Four years ago, I married my best friend.

We had a small wedding, just our parents, Jason's sister and brother and a couple from the Parish that Jason grew up in. It was so typically us; no big party, nobody to entertain, we left right after Mass and hugs from family.

I had quit my job and was scheduled to start a new job after we got home from our honeymoon, which was 4 days in Rome, followed by a Mediterranean cruise.









Some pictures from our honeymoon, it was breathtaking almost everywhere we went.

I'd like to post something sweet and sappy, but the words aren't flowing in any semblance of order. I'll just say I feel so blessed that he is in my life, that he is my best friend, that I get to spend every day with him.

I love you Jason, thank you for asking me to be your bride!





Monday, September 23, 2013

All the Things

Another weekend went by too quickly around here, as I'm sure is the same for everyone else. This weekend we had a big bike race in our area that brought in somewhere between 800 and 1500 people (big discrepancy? Yes, that's because we didn't have a good source;-)). Jason volunteered to be a security guard at the campsite and watch bikes for a few hours in the middle of the night. Saturday I was scheduled to work in Garden City, and of course right as I was getting in the shower Christopher woke up. Jason pulled him onto the bed with him, but as is usually the case at that time he really wanted some milk and his momma. So he got down and started running around, we think he tripped on something and his tooth might have gone through his lip. :(


It looked worse this morning so I took him to the doctor. We'll be doing some antibiotics to keep away any possible infections. Poor kiddo!

Yesterday we decided to go to Las Animas to visit Jason's parents and we rode our bikes from their house into town to play at the park.



I think we did about 12 miles, so it was a nice ride. Except for the fact that on the way back to their house the wind was blowing so hard against us! I seriously hate the wind. :-|

So we have these awesome English ivy vines on our house that help to keep our house cool, it's pretty nice.


But, it seems to be growing, even up our screens and kind of looks like some horror movie.




 I was trying to cut it down and managed to slice the screen. :( So, then I just cut it from the bottom, which apparently is what I was supposed to do to begin with. Sigh..guess we'll need to replace that screen.

So, I guess that covers most of the weekend. Sorry for my rambling, hopefully the pictures make up for it.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Spiritual Dusk

I was trying to find a way to verbalize how I feel about my spiritual life right now. I don't feel like it is a "dark night" but I definitely feel like I am not living up to my spiritual potential. If Jason has to go to work early or I can't get myself to wake up in the morning, I find that I am struggling to just get my morning prayers said. I know that he is the spiritual head of household, but that's kind of ridiculous. ;-)

When I try to make the time with a calendar reminder for us to pray the Rosary together as a family in the evening, something comes up and it gets moved back until the night is over and I am praying the Rosary until I fall asleep. Not only do we not pray together as a family, but I'm not getting the most out of the praying that I do on my own.

I sat down with the boys this morning and tried to go over the sign of the cross and some other prayers from this book. Dominic flipped out and didn't want anything to do with it. He's kind of been doing this with any kind of reading, but I'm feeling a bit guilty that I don't focus our day enough on the spiritual. We pray before meals and we talk about Jesus and Mary but I just feel like we could be doing so much more.

Sorry for this rambling, word-vomit type of post. I just needed to get my thoughts out there so that hopefully I can organize myself a bit better. Suggestions for integrating more spirituality into our day would be greatly appreciated. :)

Monday, September 16, 2013

Making Corrections

So we had a well child checkup for the boys last week and discussed a number of things, vaccines included. We delay vaccinations and I was just asking for some ideas on when our doctor thought it would be good to get any of them. He is super supportive of any choice of vaccinating, whether you delay, don't vaccinate, or if you go by standard suggested vaccination times. I think this is ideal in a physician; someone who will support your choices as a parent (assuming no abuse or neglect of course). I'm open to research if anyone has some links they'd like to share, for or against vaccinations, I like to read it all. :)

Also the doctor went through what things the boys could do developmentally and he seemed a bit concerned about Dominic. In fact, he was concerned enough that he wants us to get a speech evaluation done for him. He didn't tell us the specifics but apparently he is on the "low" end of normal and since we have a documented delay (Christopher's speech) in the family, he didn't want to risk missing something. Let me tell you, I left that appointment feeling terrible. Feeling like I must be doing something wrong because both of our boys might be behind. I've since thought that through and I don't believe it to be "my fault", but I do think there are some changes that I can make.

For one, we are going to get back to making some attempt at "school" even if it's just coloring or talking about numbers or things a long those lines. I'm currently looking for my book about Charlotte Mason's ideas for preschool so that I can go through that and do a bit more unschool type schooling for this age. For another I'm going to be making some cuts in my social media/blogging/playing online or on my phone time. I don't think that I do it so much, but I know that I'm easily caught up in something. An online discussion on Twitter, a video on Food Network (that quickly turns into 2 or 3 videos), sucked into a blog that leads me to another and another. It's so easy for me to get sucked in to the online world. I'm going to try to limit my phone/social media time to only if the boys are napping. What this becomes is less time the boys are watching SpongeBob or other cartoons. Because it gets really easy for me to just turn it on "for a minute" then I get busy and we are doing nothing. This will help me keep my focus on the boys and playing, laughing, teaching, BEING with them. I hope.

So that's my plan, I'm going to try to refocus (it seems like I do this often) on my vocation as wife and mom. I thought about cutting out social media completely, but the truth is that I enjoy the connections that I make. It helps me to feel connected to other Catholic wives and mothers and gives me a community. I won't feel guilty for having those connections and fostering friendships, but that doesn't mean it's OK to neglect my primary duties.

And now, to lighten things up a bit, here are some pictures from the weekend!
The boys and I went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel without Daddy since he hates it, and I told Dominic "let's take a picture for Daddy" and he looked at the camera and said "hi Daddy!"



Dominic enjoying the chairs at the Dodge dealer. Also some dinosaur show on PBS that he loved.
Went to see Aunt Jonnie for her birthday and Dominic loves driving this Jeep around, but mostly in reverse.

Christopher was thoroughly enjoying Daddy swinging his cousin Emily into him

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Theme Thursday-Text and a Recap

I'm linking up with the Clan again this week, and we're talking about text today. This fit in with where I was this week; I had to do a continued education to keep up my PTA license (6 hours down 14 to go :-/).

It was  a great class; I learned a lot about dementia and how to treat patients suffering from this with more dignity and to help them get the most out of their therapy. I also took A LOT of notes, it reminded me of being in school and I sort of missed that (shhh don't tell Jason, he might think I want to go back!).






Jason went with the boys and they spent the day playing and I think had a good time. After I was done with the class, we found a splash park for the boys!






It was lots of fun!