Memories

The garage is a mess and I have been trying to spend 15 minutes a day in there trying to get things cleaned up. You know there are just boxes out there that just keep getting pushed to the side or moved to another shelf and they are never gone through to see what is really in there and is it worth keeping what is in there. So today I came across a rubbermaid bin, when I opened it up it was about half full of books. The bin was given to me almost 7 years ago, by my aunt. These were books that my cousins had outgrown and she passed onto me to use in my classroom. This has been the bin that rides in the back of my Suburban on numerous occasions and I can't lift the thing so I slowly take some books out of it and carry them into my classroom, that is of course on days that I remember it is in the back. Then when we go places and need to load up the back of the Suburban the bin comes out and sits back in the garage until the cycle is repeated all over again.

So today I bring the bin of books into my house and sit down at the computer to lexile level them (something that we use to level books as an educator). I am going through them and leveling them and come across a book titled "Helen Keller Courage in the Dark" and what fond memories come rushing back into my brain. I don't remember how old I was but I read a book about Helen Keller when I was a child and what a miraculous woman she was. For someone who was blind and deaf she was amazing! Later I came across another Helen Keller book "A Girl Named Helen Keller." I look forward to taking these 2 books into my classroom this year and teaching them about this amazing woman!

Another book I came across took me back to my student teaching time. It is "Chicken Soup With Rice" by Maurice Sendak. I student taught in a first grade classroom back in the fall of 1997 and my cooperating teacher had blown up the poems for every month into poster size and the students learned the poems every month. My first year teaching I so wanted to use those poems in my classroom and couldn't locate the book. The copyright date is 1962 no wonder I couldn't find it. But now I have it and I believe I will use the poems with my students this year. They are just fun silly poems that I know my second graders will enjoy! Thanks Karen Proctor for introducing this book to me and now 10 years later I finally own it...actually I have had it for the past 7 years and just didn't know it.

What a week!

Monday began with T attending VBS at our church for the first time, he was somewhat hesitant at first but makes friends very easily. Today was the last day and I think he enjoyed himself and learned all about Jesus' last few days.

SSBL 2 started this past Monday and I was doing really well with it until Eric called and told me he was on his way to a cardiologist. He had not told me that he had been having tightness in his chest for the past week. I guess he decided to talk to someone at work about it and he put some fear in him. So he went to our family doctor who then sent him to the cardiologist after and EKG showed premature atrial contrations. He then had a stress test done on Wed. All appears to be fine and he has a follow up appointment with the cardiologist in 2 weeks. Needless to say I am a stress eater and was able to keep a handle on my eating Tuesday afternoon/evening, but Wed. was shot. In my food journal there is a big red X for Wed.

T had been complaining that his right ear was bothering him. Wed. night while washing his hair I went to wash behind his ear and he screamed. I finally decided that the doctor needed to be called. Thursday afternoon I took him to the doctor and just as I was suspecting he had swimmers ear. No more of this for 4-5 days.

Today ended up being a very fun day for the boys and I after T had VBS. Last Friday was 4th of July and was a rainy day for most of the day and I wasn't able to capture the boys 4th of July pictures. Today was a reenactment day. T had a great time telling me where he wanted pictures taken and what he wanted to do for the pictures. Here are a couple to share from the photo shoot.





After the photo shoot we came inside to make brownie bites. The boys were a big help and T enjoyed licking the spoon. R had a great time dumping the ingredients into the bowl to be mixed.



Looking forward to a weekend filled with making memories with my family!

Today is the day!

Why have I let myself go. It is like I don't have any self esteem anymore, but I am going to change this attitude and get my butt in gear. I need to start movin' and groovin' and start eating right. I have let myself go and I don't know why. I am not going to sit and cry I am going to take action and start today. I have so much to live for and I need to do this for me, my boys, my husband, and my family. I need to be the best me that I can be.

So what am I going to do? TODAY, I will restart my WW plan and get exercising. I can do this with baby steps. Yes, tomorrow is 4th of July, but I don't care. I am not going to wait until after the holiday to begin, today is the day I need to get back in shape and lose the weight that I have gained back.

I decided to join SSBL 2 and one of the questions was how much weight do you want to lose? I went and weighed myself and was shocked to see the number that I need to lose. I am only 13 pounds away from when I gave birth to my children, I cannot possibly ever reach or go over that number. I need to take control of my life starting today!

I know what my problem is, I LOVE FOOD! I eat food because I am happy, sad, mad, frustrated, surprised, stumped, stressed, glad...I just eat food no matter what I am feeling and it doesn't matter if I am hungry, I will just eat. Today is the day that I will eat to make myself healthy. I realize that this will not happen overnight, even though it seems to have appeared overnight. Baby steps is what it will take.

Best $10 ever spent!

The master bathroom is often neglected as far as cleaning goes, yes I shamelessy admit. Especially the shower. We have lived in this house for a little over 9 years and the master bathroom shower has always been difficult to keep clean. One of my Sunday rituals is to clean the shower, but I can never get it clean like I would like for it to be clean. Well after today it is on its way to being clean like it should be.

When at the grocery store Monday night I came across a new product that was on sale. It looked very promising for my shower, this is what it said..."The Ultimate Powered Cleaning Tool!" I started to walk away from it and ended up going back thinking maybe it would work. I have tried other cleaning solutions that I thought were promising but they never did the trick.

So this morning I decided to give this tool a try. I put some Soft Scrub w/ Bleach on the shower wall and gave this new tool a try. Oh my goodness the immediate results were amazing! Now in the past I have put the cleaner on and scrubbed until my arms hurt and it never looked this good.

I am going to do a shower wall a day until the shower walls are shining again back like it was in 1983.

I will share my results with you along with a picture of the "Sonic Scrubber," my new favorite cleaning too.

Blog Challenge #22

In honour of Father's Day and since mine has been on my mind of late: tell me, what is the greatest lesson you ever learned from your father?

I have to say one of the greatest lessons my father has taught me is to stand up for myself.

The weekend before Father's Day I flew back to my hometown in Maryland so that I could attend my nephew's high school graduation. It was a great trip and I went kidless, even though it was a quick trip, one night stay I really enjoyed it and it was a much needed break away from normal life days. As we were remembering things about my oldest nephew's childhood and funny things that he said or did as a little one. I started talking about things that I remembered from my childhood.

Now my father is a man that most people choose not to mess with, because he is one that is always right. When I was a preteen someone decided to cross the line with my father and I happened to be the only other person with him.

My dad is a volunteer fireman and was very active when I was growing up so a lot of our time was spent at the fire station whether it was helping out at a banquet or a supper serving food or just being the kid who gets left behind while dad goes on a fire call. Yes, that did happen a number of times in my life. I would be left in the radio room at the fire station until dad returned from a call.

Well on one particular Saturday there was a supper going on at the fire hall and my family was there helping I had a softball game and dad was the one who was going to take me to the game. As we were trying to back out of the parking space someone in another car said something to my father and my dad said something back, don't remember the words that were exchanged, but I do remember what happened next. As we were driving next to the guy, the guy gave my dad the finger. The emergency break was pulled and the car was put into neutral and out went my dad. I immediately locked all the doors in the car, I was so scared and didn't know what was going to happen. My dad and this man got into a fight and then he got back in the car and took me to my softball game like nothing had happened, except that it did. Not a word was spoken on the way to my game and nothing until just recently had been spoken in my earshot of this event. But from that day forward I knew that I needed to stand up for what I believed in.

As we talked about this event just a couple of weekends ago. I found out that my dad was so mad that this guy gave him the finger in front of me and went out and got into a fight about it and stood up for his little girl.

New lesson learned from dad, when someone does something inappropriate in front of your kids don't let them get away with it. Of course I already know this, but the reminder didn't hurt.

Blog Challenge #12 Getting to Know You

1) Right now I want: to enjoy the week with my family while I am on Spring Break.

2) I wish I knew how to: digital scrapbook. I think that if I did I would be caught up in no time. Of course dh tells me I already spend too much time on the computer.

3) When I want to indulge myself, I: get a big scoop of peanut butter, but I have been trying to stay away from the PB jar. So I will read a magazine, read a book, or go get a pedicure with a friend.

4) You’ll never see me: skydiving

5) A childhood memory that I love: my family along with my aunts and uncles and grandmother would spend Sundays at my great-grandmothers. It was always so much fun playing with my cousin. My great-grandmother made the best sugar cookies and they were soft not the hard ones. I so need to get that recipe and figure out how to make them like she did. Not living near family I so miss those moments of being together with the extended family, something that my own children only get to experience about once a year instead of weekly.

6) 2 things I do every single day: Read email and Scrapshare and talk to my friends on the phone.

7) Happiest moment of 2008, so far: just everyday family times with the 4 of us when we are laughing and the kids are doing something funny you can't help but to laugh. We have been trying very hard to do things together as a family. It is a goal for 2008 for us. The best day we have had together was Good Friday. DH took the day off work and we spent the day at the Miami Metrozoo, it was just a great day spending time and making memories with the family.

8) Describe yourself in 3 words: honest, caring, loving

9) 2 scrap related goals for this year: to get current in my albums and attend 3 retreats

10) You have $40 that you MUST spend on yourself – what do you do with it? If I had it this week I would be going to Micheal's and purchasing a new Cricut cartridge any other week I would be treating myself to a new outfit.

Second part of the challenge: a picture of me at the computer...

Not the most flattering picture but 6 year old ds took it.

Pen in the laundry

My oldest son has a soccer game this morning and his uniform hasn't been washed so I get up early this morning and put the uniform in the wash along with other random dirty clothes. After the washing machine is done running I go and put the clothes into the dryer. As I am transferring the clothes from washer to dryer I am finding random lite brite pieces that I am pulling out. Get everything set in the dryer come back in from garage (that is where washer/dryer are located) and go into kitchen make myself breakfast, clean up the kitchen, put some other random clutter away and later go out to see if dryer is done. DH is working on packing the trailer so we can go to the races today and as I am talking to him the dryer finishes. Go over to take the clothes out of the dryer and start to notice some marks on clothes and the inside of the dryer. Notice there had to be a pen left somewhere in the dryer, so I thank my dh for making this lovely mess and ruining some clothes. He does apologize, but I still am not happy about this mess. I try to rub off all the pen marks on the inside of the dryer and they are not coming off. I just hope that it doesn't come off on my next load of laundry that I dry.

The one good thing about this is thankfully when my clothes come off they are typically inside out. So a nice white polo shirt that I have now has black ink spots all over the inside of it but it is not noticable on the outside.