A night at the Circus

Tonight I got to watch my 3 loves all see their first Circus!! It was PRECIOUS! you should have seen the kids walking in, taking it all in.  I got an email several weeks ago that I could get discounted tickets to the circus through my school system, and since this weekend, the kids have to go to their biological mother's apartment, I got the tickets for tonight... yes, it was a school night, but it was my birthday, so TOTALLY excusable!!  We got there early enough for the pre-show which was pretty cool.  The kids got to meet the performers, get  a stick on tattoo, watch an elephant paint a picture, see a sneak preview of a few of the performances, got clown noses, and got to try on a few pieces of circus wardrobe. We got to our seats in PERFECT time for the show to begin.  It was terrific.  So colorful, and busy... never a dull moment... sort of like our life :).  We did leave a few minutes early so the kids could still get in their 8 hours of sleep, but they were too tired to really appreciate it by that point anyway. We were in the front row of the balcony, so we had a great view of everything, and the luxury of leaning against the rails with noone in front of us to worry about. It also came in really handy when they brought the tigers out and the kids jumped in both our laps, in fear of the tigers coming to get them.  I thought about telling them they'd be full from eating all the people in the front by the time they got to us, but I decided that it probably wasn't the best way to handle the situation. haha... they relaxed after a few minutes though.

I like this email :)

Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine..

I got to thinking one day about all those people on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.

How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word 'refrigeration' mean nothing to you?

How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched 'Jeopardy' on television?

I cannot count the times I called my sister and said , 'How about going to lunch in a half hour?' She would gas up and stammer, 'I can't. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday, I had a late breakfast, It looks like rain' And my personal favorite: 'It's Monday.' She died a few years ago. We never did have lunch together.

Because South Africans cram so much into their lives, we tend to schedule our headaches. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect!

We'll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Steve toilet-trained. We'll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet. We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.

Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of 'I'm going to,' 'I plan on,' and 'Someday, when things are settled down a bit.'

When anyone calls my 'seize the moment' friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes, and you're ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Rollerblades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.

My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process. The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.

Now...go on and have a nice day. Do something you WANT to...not something on your SHOULD DO list.

Another WOW

So, I was cleaning up the desks in my classroom this morning and found a new WOW in one of the desks...

Yep... the 2011 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.  REALLY!?!?!

At least I know my lesson must have been interesting if they forgot all about the magazine and left it... haha.

Clean up Clean up Everybody Everywhere...

Its no secret that I'm not the best housekeeper.  I've said MANY times that I'm SO glad my parents sent me to College because I NEVER would have made it as a maid. Olivia and Tyler are no Mr. Cleans either. And it probably doesn't help that they have too many toys and clothes to even fit in their rooms and closets, but that's beside the point. Well, enough was finally enough, so after naps Sunday afternoon, the kids and I set out on a clean up mission.

I wanted to get rid of the clothes and toys that the kids never wear or play with, and I was slightly successful with that, but not completely... I kept trying to throw away the toys that Tyler is too big to play with, but he was not too keen on the idea.  I even told him that we'd take them to the church nursery so he could still play with them sometimes, or that we could donate them for little boys that didn't have any toys, but he didn't go for those ideas either.  The boy kept INSISTING that we SAVE the toys for OUR BABY!! "What baby? baby?" "The baby Jesus is going to put in your belly." "Oh, THAT baby." Um, okay??? So they're all in a box... going into the attic, I guess.

Here are our "Clean" rooms.... notice that there is TOO MUCH STUFF for the rooms to ever actually be CLEAN.

There's a case full of cars, a dresser with a tv on it, another big basket of toys, a huge fire truck and tractor trailer that wouldn't fit in the box, and a basket full of shoes that are not in the pictuer of Tyler's room.  HAHA i just now realized that I STILL haven't gotten another blue curtain to match Tyler's stuff... haha... See, NEVER WOULD HAVE MADE IT as a housekeeper!! And that strange random blob on Olivia's wall is a flower... there are several more on the wall, they just didn't make the picture :)

Snack Night

Every once in a while, my dad's side of our family will get together for a family game night.  Everyone brings snacks, and we eat, talk, joke, and play board and card games.  Well, our most recent game night was Saturday, but it didn't quite turn out the way we'd planned.  We had SO much food and SO much fun that we never got around to playing the games!!  We decided that next time, we'll just have snack night :).  Everyone raved and raved about how much they loved to have appetizers and dips and snacks like that for dinner.  It was terrific!!

Junior and Tyler went up to my parents' house a little early, since it was such a beautiful day, so that Tyler could ride the four wheeler that Santa brought to him and his sister. By the time I got there, he was riding all over the pasture all by himself.  Before that, he'd been following Junior around on one of my dad's four wheelers.  I was so proud watching my big boy ride around on his REAL four wheeler.  He's so big and so smart.  I just love my little boy to pieces!!!!

SSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CCCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

How can a child that I didn't give birth to be so much like me???

My poor sweet baby girl has had a runny nose for a few days.  Saturday, we had a full day, so I wanted to make sure she was feeling okay, and didn't have to blow her poor little nose constantly.  I had a coupon for Triaminic, and it was on sale at Ingles last week, so I bought the daytime formula... so I gave it to her Saturday morning, and about mid-morning, when dad came in from working on the dune buggy, she sat in his lap to snuggle with him, and this is what happened...

I just thought she was tired from all the housework we did earlier that morning, and she'd gotten up really early. So, 4 hours after the first dose, when we were getting ready to go see the Sound of Music, I gave her another dose so that she would not be sniffing and blowing during the show. We got ready, hopped in the car, and were on the way, when she suddenly got very quiet.  I looked back to find...

It was at this point that I realized that daytime medicine has the opposite effect on my baby... SAME AS ME!!! I understand why some of her mannerisms, expressions, and sayings are like mine, but there are a lot of other things that are similar between us that don't make sense.  FREAKY... but I love it!!!!

She's feeling much better now :) and she woke up before we got to the play.  When she was waking up, I asked her what she was doing and she said "I'm playing the quiet game." :)  I told her she's very good at it.

When God Shows you Something...

sometimes he makes it too obvious for you to deny.

I added a post last week about some bad news and God reminding me through my own blog post that He has a plan. Well, I'm still praying over the events of last week, and as I was taking up papers in my 6th grade class, I was reminded, yet again, how sometimes things seem so trivial and then end up being perfectly in place for something else.

I won't bore you with the details of my paper taking-up skills - or lack thereof, but it was just another reminder that everything happens for a reason.

I'm pretty excited about that.