For Today

Today I am....

FOR TODAY Sunday, December 27th, 2009

Outside my window... It's dark outside.
I am thinking... about my working options.
I am thankful for... a wonderful Christmas spent with my family.
From the kitchen... nothing was cooked today by me but Emma made me Kraft mac n cheese for dinner with chocolate cake for dessert. It was delicious.
I am wearing... grey sweats
I am creating... a scrapbook of memories for my mom from the funeral.
I am going... to go to bed soon.
I am reading... Home For Christmas by Anita Stansfield
I am hoping... that this new year will be a better year for me spiritually
I am hearing...the quiet murmur of the TV in the family room.
Around the house... there are Christmas gifts that need to be put away and vacuuming that needs to be done.
One of my favorite things... spending time with Chris.
A few plans for the weekend: Snowboarding and skiing at Timberline while I sit in the lodge and read.
Here is a picture thought I am sharing...

I'm ready for Christmas

I'm ready for Christmas.

I may not have all my presents wrapped.
I may not have finished all the baking on my list
I may not even have all of my shopping done (this is true)
I may not have cleaned the house to my liking

but......

We had a great Family Home Evening last night.
We went caroling as a family
Today I went to the temple with my mom
I saw 4 ward members working there
and my heart filled with love.
I reflected on the Savior, my Savior, your Savior and realized

I'm ready.

Meanest Mom Ever

I was told today in a fit of rage that I was the meanest mom ever. This came because I told her to go to her room and work on her homework. She had been home for 2 1/2 hours and had not done what she was supposed to.

Hm, if I'm the meanest mom ever then why am I here? Believe me, i would have bailed a long time ago. My hours are terrible, I don't get paid at all and I certainly get no recognition. I'm here because I love you, dear daughter of mine.

This makes me think about a conversation I had two nights ago with a friend. She put forth the idea that all moms should have sweatshirts. With patches. And the patches would say things like , "my child may not be an A student but I help them everyday with their homework" or " I sewed on a trillion boyscout patches" What about, "I feed my family?"

I applaud this idea. We should all have sweatshirts and wear them on Mothers day. And then instead of the dumb plant or flower that is going to die (sorry, it's the way I feel) the men at my church could give us stripes, kind of like the ones the military wear so proudly on their uniforms. The stripes would say we survived another year of motherhood. And speaking of military, they get saluted.

I'd like to be saluted. Maybe just once.

Perhaps someone is reading this that has a husband and children that applaud them and express their thanks most profusely. To this person I say congratulations. I'm happy for you, but I need a sweatshirt.

Christmas Party

Emma came to me and said she wanted a Christmas party. At first I said no, thinking of all the other things I had going on. But then I decided it was a good thing. I really regret not having some type of get-together when Makenzie was in 6th grade. Here she was off to a new school and an entirely new set of friends. I had weird fears about having a party with that age back then. But now that I've been through that age with Makenzie I see Emma in that age at a different perspective. So having a party with her friends seemed so much less scary to me than it did a few years ago with Makenzie. So a party we had.

For invitations I used some vintage Christmas cards that I had purchased a long time ago. They came in a pack that you tear out and I had plenty. So I just printed out the information for the party, cut the paper the size of the postcard and glued it to the back of the adorable postcards. They made perfect invitations.

It ended up being small. I even invited a friend of Heidi's to come. The party was from 3-5 after school on Friday. It was a perfect time. Early enough not to interfere with holiday family evening plans. When the girls arrived they had a snack of pizza and apple cider and then we went to work on making "Reindeer Bark". The girls all helped and it turned out great. I had one girl who has a wheat allergy so I made her pizza with a corn tortilla and we made her Reindeer Bark with just the candy corn. It still looked very holiday and festive and she loved it.

Next we moved into the Living room for some games. We played Holiday Charades where the girls had to draw something out of the bag and act it out. They had to act out such things like 'getting your picture taken with Santa' and 'caroling door-to-door. They got some great laughs out of this game. I kept track of who guessed the most right and that person won a small prize.

Next up was "blow the snowflake" The girls each chose a piece of tissue paper and with scissors made a snowflake. Then they chose a cute santa or snowman straw and they had to blow their snowflake with the straw. The person who got their snowflake to go the farthest won a prize.

Our last game was hilarious. It was "Melt the Ice Cube." Each girl was given an ice cube in bowl and had to melt it without using their mouths. The person to melt theirs first got the prize. This was so funny and they were laughing during the whole thing. It was amazing to see how creative they got. The girl who won ended up breaking hers into small pieces with her bowl and then melting all the smaller pieces. Great thinking!

When all the games were over we sat in the living room by the lights of the tree and went around the room answering some questions I came up with. After all, part of my objective in doing this was getting to know each of the girls. They liked answering the questions and liked talking about themselves.

The last thing we did was watch the movie "Elf." We didn't have time to get through the entire movie but it was a great ending to a fun party. I'm glad we did it. I was determined to keep the costs down and I think I ended up spending about $25 on the party. I bought all prizes and paper goods at the Dollar Store, did Little Caesars pizza and bought the ingredients for the Reindeer Bark at Winco. A very inexpensive party and well worth the time.

Heidi Skip Day

Heidi and I during Cheerleading season '09

I believe in a good skip day. High School Seniors do it. College students do it. Mom's even do it occasionally. You know, the "forget it all, i'm reading ALL DAY LONG." But what about our younger kids? Yeah, their life isn't too difficult all considering but they are often going through things that we can't understand until we take the time to talk. So that's why I believe in a good skip day.

I knew that Heidi needed one when she came to me this morning and told me that she was feeling sad because some kids were talking about her behind her back. It was one of those, "Sadie said that so and so said the project was easier when I go to speech. Mom, do I have to go to speech?" She was sad and not in the book learning frame of mind.

I knew just the thing, "Heidi, would you like to stay home and help me today?" She got a big smile at that suggestion.

So this is what we did:

First off a call to the school to let them know she wouldn't be there today!

Dropped Dad off at work
Went to Party City to look for a couple things
Grabbed a sandwich for Dad at Subway
Took sandwich to dad
Doctor's appointment
Put gas in the car at Fred Meyer
Purchased some fun things at the Dollar Tree
Went back to Fred Meyer, this time for some serious Christmas shopping
Heidi bought a gift for one of her sisters
A grandmother asked Heidi what she should get her 8 year old grandaughter for Christmas
Went to Godfathers Pizza and had lunch with our BOGO lunch buffet coupon
Came home and wrapped presents

Pretty good skip day, huh?

I sure had fun and I loved spending the day with my youngest!

To create and giveaway

Several months ago I was one of the first to leave a comment on my friend Candy's blog and my sister, Krista's blog. In so doing I won for myself a homemade creation. These aren't just some scribbling on a piece of paper, although I am never one to turn up my nose at a good scribbling. I recently received both of my homemade gifts and here they are:

An adorable Christmas dry erase board from Candy

And this:

A necklace made out of vintage beads made by my sister.

I love love both of these gifts. And to think that all I had to do to get them is type away. How cool is that?

President Dieter Uchtdorf said the following about CREATING.

"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before.

Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty.

Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty—and I am not talking about the process of cleaning the rooms of your teenage children."

Go here to read his entire address.

'Tis the season to be giving and in tradition with that season I would like to propose the following:

To the First 5 People that Read This Blog........

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make but I think you will. I really think you will. I like it.
2- What I create will be just for you.
3- It'll be done in the next sixty days.

The catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!!!

FYI: You can change the rules around for this to fit you better. Maybe you only want to offer something to 3 people. Maybe you need less time to give it or more time. Don't be distracted by the numbers people.

Merry Christmas

The addition to our family

We've had an addition to our home for the past 9 days. She is cute, funny and smart. The perfect addition to our three girls. Her parents are on a vacation to the Holy Land and since I couldn't go with them I decided to bribe them into sharing every detail of their trip by watching their daughter.




We absolutely love having her with us. Some of the things we have done is go to Winter Wonderland at the Portland International Raceway where we sung the "12 days of Christmas" at the top of our lungs. And while we were finishing up Alexis declared she was thirsty. I told her she would have to wait until we got home so then her, Heidi and Emma made up the words to "The 12 days of Thirstiness" . Their true loves gave them lemonade, root beer, eggnog, apple cider, hot chocolate and of course #1 was ice cold water.

Last Thursday was the Oregon Civil War college football game. We are duck fans around here but Alexis said she was for the Beavers. That was okay, we decorated and wore our duck stuff anyway. Then about five minutes before the game started Alexis says to me, "I think i got it wrong, i think my dad likes the Ducks, not the Beavers." I don't know who her dad likes but I think Alexis wanted to feel like she was on the right team, the Ducks team. So when the game started we were all cheering for U of O with our face paint and while eating our tacos.



On Saturday we inducted Alexis into the May family tradition of Portland Saturday Market. It was too bad we were in a hurry to get back for dance dress rehearsal because there was tons to see and we didn't get a chance to see everything. But Alexis did try on some fun stuff and we got some pictures of it. It was strange for me to have to watch a little one again. Heidi is only two years older than Alexis but it is a huge difference as far as running around touching things. For the most part Alexis only had to be reminded a couple of times to be "careful" or "not to touch." I was worn out trying to keep up with her. She loved everything she saw and even bought her mom a coming home present from the market that she picked out all by herself.

On Sunday we had another May Family Christmas tradition of decorating the tree. This isn't any old decorating the tree time, we have an all out party with lots of horsdouvers, music and the decorating. I bought a yummy brie from costco with pecans and cranberries wrapped in a phyllo crust. You bake it and serve it. The girls thought it was pie and it was hilarious to see them pick up a wedge and eat it like a pie. I told them it was cheese and they got the funniest looks on their faces. Alexis especially loved the brie.


Alexis goes home in a couple days and we will really miss her. She has been a perfect playmate for Heidi and it has been fun for Heidi to be the 'older sister' and for Alexis to be the 'younger sister' since Alexis is the oldest in her family. Nice for them to have the chance to switch rolls. And as I've heard Heidi gently boss Alexis around I have to say that I think she's enjoying it.

Sprint Reclaim

I got a new phone and I've never loved a phone like this one. This is what I love about it:

• It's made of 40% corn so that if I am ever lost in the wilderness and have my phone with me I could eat it to survive. I mentioned this to Chris and he very aptly told me that if I had my phone I wouldn't need to eat it, just use it to call for help.
• It's a cool color of green.
• It slides up and down, I just like this.
• It has a full qwerty keyboard for my texting delight. Not that I text very much but when I do it's so nice to have.
• It has a smiley face menu for my texts right on the keyboard. soo cool.
• It is easy to add contacts into.
• It doesn't pick up all the outside noise around me when I'm talking to someone on the phone. Anyone who has a Blackberry will probably know what I'm talking about.
• It has nice screen savers already included. Pretty waterfalls, oceans, fields, flowers and animals. It's an eco phone, remember?
• It has the coolest ringtones, ringers and sounds. I get a bird chirping when I have a new voicemail and my ring is a simple melody with crickets chirping. I love it! There are tons of cool ones to choose from.
• It has a great camera too.
• It came with a thin simple instruction book.
  
• It's so easy to use!
  

So if you can't have the iPhone like me because you are with a provider that doesn't offer the iPhone then I recommend this one.

Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving day this year was started with the annual Springfield Turkey Stuffer and this year our whole family did it including Ross, Chris' brother. Our good friends, the Cox family joined us as well. It can't get much better than that.

This is us before the race:


Hey, where's Julie?

Here she is...

We are getting ready to start running.

After the race we traveled in our cars down to Coos Bay to share tons of good food with family and friends.


Good times!

Annual Springfield Turkey Stuffer

I did it. I finished my 5K on Thanksgiving morning. It felt good, really good. I'm still in shock that I did as well as I did. I did stop to walk twice. Once at mile one for about 90 seconds and then again at mile two for again, 90 seconds. And that was it. I probably would have stopped again but when I had about a quarter mile left my brother in law, Ross, saw me and ran the rest of the way with me. That was a blessing because I was feeling so tired right then.

I thought I was the last runner to come in. There were walkers that beat me, a lot of them. But looking at the results there were ten more women in my age category that came in after me. I don't know where they were because nobody else was running anywhere near me. Walkers were passing me by. But I didn't care. I just wanted to run the whole thing. My Emma ran the whole thing and beat my time by 11 minutes. What a rock star she is. I'm proud of all my family. Even Makenzie said it was a fun way to start Thanksgiving, I about fell over with shock when she told me that.

So what's next? Not sure. I need to find a 5K to work towards in January I think. I need to keep going. When I crossed the finish line my good friend Julie said I could now cross this off my list. When I told her it wasn't on my list she said I should add it real quick! I laughed and then seriously thought about it! But what I do have down is running a 10 minute mile and doing the Fairbanks Midnight Sun Run. I will work towards both of those. It would be super cool if I could be ready to do the Midnight Sun Run this next summer.

We'll see. All i know is that today I got on the elyptical and did it for 30 minutes. Three months ago I couldn't even do 3 minutes on it.

Tonight on "The Biggest Loser" one of the finalists was wondering how she became a "runner" and wondering if she really was one, she had never seen herself as an athlete before. I wonder the same thing. Will I get to the point someday where I will say, "I'm a runner"? Not sure, but I do know that in the process I'm becoming more physically fit and being the kind of role model that I want to be for my family.