Photo Blog :)

After taking my daughter to cheer practice, and waiting for my son's friends to come out to the van so I could pick them up, my twelve year old and I were being silly with selfies. My son decided we needed a bunch so he could start a photo blog :)

My little love, Max :)

Max trying to photobomb my picture

Yeah, I may be a little crazy!

Wow... Love these words...

I'm just linking Yvonne's blog, because I honestly could not have spoken any better. Sometimes she literally speaks straight to my heart. Last night was one of those days. Love love love reading her blog. Sometimes she literally moves me to tears. She's quite extraordinary, and I love how "real" she is. Praying for supernatural healing on sweet Selah, and lifting her up to the Lord, Yvonne!!

Free Falling Friday

Strange Days

This week has flown by! I'm probably the only person in the planet that doesn't get excited that it's the weekend. That has a lot to do with the fact that I typically work the weekends. Maybe someday I'll get a normal job and have normal days off like a normal person. Maybe.

What a strange, wonderful, unexpected week this has been. I have a general rule, and that is that surprises are bad. Historically, surprises in my life have not been good ones. They're usually along the lines of:

"Surprise! Look, Mom! I made you breakfast!" (and broke three dozen eggs on the kitchen floor)
or
"Look, I painted the dog!"
or
"Surprise! Someone in Pittsburgh went shopping with your American Express!"
or
"Surprise! You've got a warrant out for your arrest for an unpaid parking ticket!"
or
"Surprise! I'm sleeping with someone else and sending you an email to tell you I'm leaving!"

See why I dislike surprises? They are never, ever good. There's something to be said for boring. Boring is good. Boring typically means nothing bad is happening. Boring means everything is status quo, and I don't have to worry about what awful thing is about to grace me with its presence. But this week my whole world has seemed topsy turvy. I don't really know which way is up, or whether I'm just imagining things. I'm thinking it's far more likely that I'm having a mental crisis and maybe have just imagined this week. Or perhaps I'm in such a sleep-deprived stupor that I'm dreaming? I don't know, could be :) Either way, I've had a great week. Super great. It's weird and unexpected, to be sure. My weeks are basically the same thing, day in and day out. For years, it has basically been the same thing every day. So the fact that every day this week has been completely NOT the same as every other day in my life has been so wonderfully weird. Crazy. I've managed to keep my head straight with school, which is going surprisingly well, despite my horrendous classload this quarter. Somehow I've managed to find way more free time in my schedule than should really be possible. I'm surprisingly enjoying that I don't really know what weird trick the universe is playing on me. I'm not even going to worry about when it's inevitably going to go bad, and how awful it's going to be then. Not today. If I am indeed in the midst of a break with reality, I'm okay with that. It's been a good week for it.

Totally randomness...

I am sooo over winter. I hate being frozen. I hate not having sunshine. I hate that the ridiculous temperatures make my rheumatoid arthritis do awful things to me. I dream of living somewhere that I don't miss the sun for half of the year, and have winters that drag on eternity. I was not only born in the wrong era, I was born in the wrong part of the country too.

I love days when the kids get up and have their schoolwork done by 11:00 am, and I didn't even have to tell them to do it. Withholding technology until schoolwork is done is a good motivator. Now I just wish that MINE was done. ::sigh:: It never ends.

We're definitely taking a little vacation to the Wisconsin Dells soon. I just have to try to figure out when. That is easier said than done with a schedule like mine. We have a four day cheer competition in Columbus, Ohio at the end of March, and by the grace of God that fell perfectly into my schedule with no conflicts. I just have to try to work a miracle to get this one in somehow. This one will be an actual vacation, whereas the cheer competition will be a little more stressful and chaotic. But my boys will have a blast since all they have to do is hang out in the hotel pool :)

Overall, this has been a strange, wonderful week. With the exception of the insane stupid temperatures, I've smiled more than I recall for quite some time. We'll see how long that continues......

This year....

So I totally copied and pasted the comment I posted on another blog I frequent. But I'm going to put it here, so I don't lose it :)



I'm not huge on resolutions. I think that they are overdone, and as such no one really expects anyone to stick to them anyway, so they are sort of a waste of time. That being said, I *do* have some "plans" for 2014 that I'd like to stick to. I need to come up with a better word than resolution though LOL. I'd like to make 2014 a year of being intentional. I want to be more of an intentional parent, and less of a reactive parent. I'm crazy busy- single momma working two jobs, going to nursing school, homeschooling my three monkeys- and I find myself going through the paces more than anything. This next year, I want to focus on being intentional and PRESENT when I'm physically present with my kids, and not just find us swept away as life goes on. I want to really enjoy the place that we are, while we are in it. Easier said than done!!

I definitely want to jump on the healthier living bandwagon. We've cut fast food out almost completely, and that's a huge change for our busy lifestyle. Next step will be to add some time in our crazy life for exercise.

I want to read through the bible with my boys this year too. I'm really purposing to change our family focus back to God, and not on the craziness that surrounds us. I'm desperately seeking out family devotionals and whatnot for my family, and particularly my teen boys. Any suggestions? We are presently reading through "The Story" with our church, which is a chronological story of the bible.

And just because - I'm going to hope and pray that this is the year God brings a wonderful Godly man into my life, because being a single mom really, really stinks. On the upside, coming through a failed marriage with a non-believing husband made me come to a place where I know what I want in a husband and who I want to be as a partner. So who knows? (And if he has an Australian accent, that would be a huge bonus... I'm a sucker for an accent! LOL)



Sooooo maybe 2014 will be an okay year. It's going to be a crazy busy one, for sure. But I hope it doesn't breeze by so fast that I don't enjoy it while it's here. I don't want to forget my kids at the ages they are now, even though I really really want to skip ahead to the part where I'm done with school, and hopefully married and living somewhere warm year round! Ha. As if ;-P

Happy Day :)

I had a whole day off. I repeat, a WHOLE day OFF. Usually when I say I have a day off, I really mean that I may not have to work at one of my millions jobs, but probably work at the other, or have school at least. Thanks to Martin Luther King, Jr., I had no school. By the grace of God, I had no work. Somehow all the planets aligned properly, and I had an entire day with no obligations, save for a two hour window of cheerleading practice for Ella. I cannot remember the last time such a thing occurred. I had an entire house full of teenage boys, due to the slumber party my boys had last night. They were all forewarned that if they came upstairs before I gave them permission, there would be certain death. Surprisingly, they obeyed. I do believe that was the second miracle of the day. I was able to sleep in a bit this morning, before preparing the jumbo pot of Cream of Wheat to feed the hungry masses. Food and teenage boys go well together. Happy teenage boys, means happy momma.

We've lived outside the Cherry Valley library district for two years now, but I had never bothered to transfer our library cards to the Loves Park branch until today. Why? I don't know. Just lazy and busy. Finally decided today was the day. So the van full of us, herd of teenage boys included, spent a few hours enjoying the new place. It's a pretty nice library, certainly larger than Cherry Valley. I think we'll get a lot of use out of their facilities. Ella particularly liked the children's section. They have a lot of activities there for kids, that coincide with the story book of the week. Naturally, Ella was in heaven there!

Ten million library books, one DVD, and two computer games checked out, and we were off.

Half the teenagers wanted to go see "The Nut Job" so I dropped them off, and the others wanted to go get new video games at Game Stop, so I dropped them off on the way to take Ella to cheer practice. I spent an obscene amount of time talking to someone I never should have lost touch with. Super duper glad I was able to steal so much of their time to talk today. :) I picked all the teenagers and Ella up, dropped the extra kids off at their homes, and got mine settled in at home with their respective schoolwork. I managed to meet up with B and K for some yummy quesadillas and Cold Stone ice cream, since B has fallen off the health-food wagon. Yay! It's always more fun when that happens :) Unfortunately, we all have stupid crazy schedules lately, so we haven't managed to get together nearly as often as we should. Now there's a great debate on our vacation- should I still plan our trip the the Wisconsin Dells next month, or listen to Keith and squeek another Disney trip in??? Hmmmm..... Decisions, decisions... I really really need a vacation, so I'm thinking the Dells are going to win this time.

All in all, an amazingly wonderful day. I did a lot, and yet nothing, all at the same time. None of it was work. None of it was school. All of it made me happy. And all was right with the world.