"There is no more — a higher calling — than raising children who are kind, who live with grace and who are going to be generous human beings in the world. There isn’t anything greater than that."

– Oprah Winfrey

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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Art of Chaos

It takes a bit of setting up before I can write.
I mostly write at night, after the kids have
been bathed and jammied, the tv is off and the coffee is hot.
I like to listen to this song or this song or this song while
I try to get my thoughts out of my head and make the words
that type themselves out make some kind of sense.

Writing has been especially hard because life has been really chaotic lately and I am really sick.

My little sister is in town from Canada and my little cousin's getting married in 2 weeks
so it's been one event after the other. Girls' nights, lunches, coffee dates and daytrips...

Mix that with 3 little ones at home, schoolwork and
our regular, everyday life and you get quite a crazy blend of chaos.


The littlest one is sick. I've had a week of fevers and lethargy from her.
She wants to stay close to home. She wants to snuggle. She wants her mama.

Just to make sure it was nothing serious, she and I ventured out to the Dr.'s office.

She's usually really mellow when it comes to being in new places.
But today, not so much. Sister wanted nothing to do with that Dr.
She actually kept trying to escape!

Thank goodness I brought the trusty old iPad to keep her occupied.

We got sent home with a prescription for lots of hugs, Childrens' Advil and ice cream.
Nothing more serious than that...

As sick as she is, she still managed to find her way into our Nutella jar and CLEAN it out!

All she wants is her blanket, her bed and cartoons.
Watching her watch the cartoons is quite comical...
Her million emotions come out...

She's got sick eyes...and no energy. I hate seeing her this way.


_______________________________________________________________

And now, for my heart-bursting proud moment of the YEAR...
I've been pretty open about the challenges I've had with my boy, Charlie, lately.
His disruptive behavior at the beginning of this schoolyear
might actually have taken a few years off of my life. Trying to figure out
better ways to parent him and challenge his little mind has had me
questioning everything I know to be true. Getting note after note home from his teachers
and even his behavior at home was exhausting, at best.  

Things have been improving as of late and we get along so much better.


Today, we got the ultimate reward for our hard work and perseverance....
Citizen of the Month of not only his English class but his French class too!
Forgive the bragging mama, here but we worked HARD for this...

He was a little bit shy about his accomplishment.
He said that his stomach was "a little bit tickly" when they called his name...
but you could tell right away that he was so proud of himself.


As a special reward, I showed up after school to pick him up with balloons
and we went out to celebrate at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor...





The staff sang him a song for his achievement and oh man, was this guy shy!





If you need to find me, I'll be somewhere between tucking in my babies,
baking for our school's bake sale, drinking in every second I can of having my
sister in town and enjoying my friends & family...


As a mom of little kids, you just have to learn the fine art of making the chaos work.

Pfft, chaos? I got this covered...



Sunday, February 26, 2012

You Are Here

Sometime in the last year, I decided to embrace that little red dot
on the directory at the mall. The dot with three little words on it.

YOU ARE HERE.

I started liking it. I liked that it showed me where I was in relation
to where I needed to go. I'd like to have that option in life.
I thought it would be a nice philosophy to embrace.

It's nice to dream. I have a ton of dreams.
It's good to want better and to have a goal in life to work towards.
But in all that, you're still living the one and only, beautiful life that you have.
If you're always looking to where you want to go, you will miss the
where you are now part, HERE... and that part can be so glorious.

I've found that the moments that happen that I don't take the time to appreciate are
almost always the ones I look back on as some of my fondest memories.
Taking that step back and really looking at where you are instead of where you
want to be has been really life-changing for me.

I am tired of waiting to be a certain something in order to live my life happily.
I felt like I was always waiting to live. Waiting to be smarter, thinner, richer...

Although there are certainly still times when I feel like I wish
I was somewhere or someone else, the moments where
I'm glad to be exactly where and who I am are far greater.

I am here.

And here is pretty amazing.

___________________________________________

A few weeks ago, here found us in the mountains.



These 3 were so happy.
I loved seeing the red cheeks and  the red noses on their smiling faces.





We did all the fun snow stuff...
Late night walks to the snowy park, snowball fights,
sledding, tubing, hot chocolates, cupcakes, hot baths followed
by pay-per-view movies and pizza

This snowbunny could not get enough of eating snow.

Who throws snowballs straight at the photographer?!












Tubing was, by far, the favorite thing to do... Kate and Charlie still talk about it.

Of course we had to try the local cupcakes, a long-standing tradition.
The cherry pie cupcake did not disappoint...


Loving where I am...







Friday, February 17, 2012

Love

It's the perfect month to be focusing on love.
Who I love, things I love, what I love to do...

I love my book of quotes about loving life.

I love my boy's new toothless grin.
(and interesting tidbit though... it didn't just fall out by itself.
Kate kicked Charlie in the mouth and knocked it out.
Thank God it was already loose!)


I love drinking coffee out of my Wicked souvenir cup.

I love seeing my name on the spine of a book and my
words and photographs fill up page after page of an actual book.

I finally printed the blog book of the first year of this blog.
The first year of Ella's life and the lives of us ever since then.
I feel like I accomplished something good here.
That one day, my kids will hold these books very dear to their hearts.


And mostly, today, I love my tiniest dancer...

Ella had her first ever dance class.
She always tries to sneak in on Kate's class because she loves it so much.
She has been watching Kate go to her ballet class for almost 2 years now.

Today, it was her turn.

And she loved it!





She lost her tutu several times...

I'm so in love with this girl. She makes me laugh every day.


My girl didn't like the loud tapping noises...at all.


All that pink girliness, wore my baby out...


Have a lovely weekend!!
Do something you love...



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