Say cheese!!!

This is what happens when your 5 year old grabs the camera and starts clicking:

There were also lots of pictures of the TV screen.  I thought I would spare you all of those. 

I suppose you could say my little princess is a drama queen in training!

Question of the day

Do you have a certain position that you like to sleep in?  Some way that is comfortable and restful for you?

Well, this is how my G-man sleeps.

I’ve found him in various shades of this position many times.  Most of the time just looking at him gives me a kink in my neck.  You can’t tell very well from this picture, but his head is bent clear back.  He is such a funny little guy.

Of course, all the other times that I find my children asleep, they are being perfect little angels like this…

Of course, it you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you!

Life changes

We have made a few decisions in the last few weeks that will affect our futures just a bit.  The first of which is we have decided to take our house off the market.  That is a bittersweet decision because we have tried to sell our house before, only to be scared off when the bottom fell out of the market 5 months into the process.  Hubby feels like this is an unfinished project now, and he always finishes what he starts, so that part of this decision is frustrating for him.  I’m a bit frustrated also because I’m beginning to feel a bit like the boy who cried wolf.  How many times are we going to try this before it actually sells!

There are several reasons that we have come to this particular conclusion.  The first of which is that the market has really died off around here, and we have only had two showings since mid April.  That is down from 2 to 3 a week.  Our agent thinks that if we drop our price again, we would get some more action.  We ran numbers again based an even lower sales price, and I’m just not comfortable with it.  Considering that our price right now is $20,000 less than what I wanted to sell at in the first place, I’m just not comfortable draining our savings account to get into a new house.  All the numbers we have run have been based on a certain amount for a down payment, and I would much rather take another year to save up more money, so that we can be at the amount that we need to be at for me to be comfortable with a new house payment.

The second reason we aren’t selling right now, is that we just haven’t found what we are looking for in a new house.  We had pretty much decided that if we sold our house we would just have to find something to rent for the indefinite future because we haven’t found anything that we want to buy.  When you haven’t found a house that you want more than the one that you are in, the idea of practically giving your house away isn’t too appealing.

The other life decision that I have made that is affecting everything else is that I have decided to go back to school.  I realized that I am 22 credits shy of my bachelor’s degree.  I had always thought that someday I would go back and finish, but never had any concrete plans to do so.  For some reason, a couple of weeks ago, I found myself on Weber State’s website, and found a spot where you could send a request for information.  I hesitantly filled in my information, not quite sure what I was planning to do, and bada-bing!  I’m re-admitted and registered for a class this fall!  It’s going to take longer than 22 credits for me to finish because I’m changing my major, but that’s okay.  I’m on the path now, and I’m really excited.

When I think about selling the house and going back to school, I look at how everything is just falling into place for going back to school, and how everything just seems to be roadblocks for selling the house.  I really think that is the Lord’s way of telling us that now is not the right time to move, and that school needs to be my priority.  I need to take this opportunity and get it done. 

I’m excited and apprehensive about these life changes that we are making.  I’m not sure if my brain will go back into college mode, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

I’m a bad mom!

I told TRMinator today that I was being a bad mom, and they were going to take away my mom license.  He thought about that for a second and asked, “Do you really have a license?”  After I stopped laughing, I told him, “No, not really,” but I still felt guilty.

This is why I’m being a bad mom.  I let TRMinator sluff half the day of school!  First, let me explain that I firmly believe in not taking my kids out of school.  I don’t schedule family vacations during school time, and I schedule dentist and doctor visits while they are off track.  I feel like if school is in session, that is where they need to be.

I checked TRMinator out early today for a doctor’s appointment.  I know, why, you ask, would I schedule a doctor’s appointment during a school day, when I don’t like to pull them out?  Well, as in most other areas of my life, it came down to the numbers.  TRMinator needed a physical for scout camp this summer and our insurance is going to change July 1st.  Our copay is going to go up, and I wanted to get him in before that happened.  I know most clinics offer scout physicals for $20, but our copay right now is only $15.  5 bucks is 5bucks!!  So in other words, I pulled him out of school so I could save $5.  That’s right!  In case you are wondering, I prefer the term frugal, or responsible to cheap!

Now here’s the bad part.  I checked him out at 10:00am.  We were done at the doctor’s office by 11:00am.  I didn’t check him back in till 1:30pm!  *gasp!!*  What on earth were we doing for that long?  Mostly just killing time!  I figured it would take a lot longer at the clinic than it did (our doctor is notorious for running behind) and I thought that it would probably be time for lunch when we were done, so we could all go out for lunch!

Since it didn’t take us as long, we sat around till it was about time for lunch, then went to go pick up Hubby, but he was in the midst of putting out some programming fires at work, so we had to sit around and wait for him.  Long story short, we finally had lunch, but we were a heck of a lot later than I ever intended to be.  I’m trying to make it better by telling myself that there are only 6 days left of school, and that they weren’t doing much anyway.

TRMinator is not the least bit upset by the whole situation.  It’s going to get really ugly though when G-man finds out that TRMinator got to skip that much school and he didn’t!  Heaven help me!

Olympic sized event!

I have been hearing grumblings from the audience for my lack of blog posts recently.  So I am here to rectify the situation, that and I’m putting off cleaning the bathrooms!  I’ve kind of had a lot on my mind lately that I have already written a post about, but I don’t think that I want to put it up quite yet, so I am going to post some pictures of the boys’ school olympics instead.

Every other year our school has what they call the Lincoln Olympics.  The kids carry flags from all over the world and walk 2 blocks (it’s actually quite a sight to see) to the high school and do all sorts of track and field activities.  They split the grades up, first through third goes in the morning, then fourth through sixth go in the afternoon.

I went over in the morning to watch the G-man for a little bit.  I only got to see one of his events because my mom & I had plans to go shopping that morning.  (Priorities!)

I think this was the 100 meter  dash.  I’m not sure since I was never a track person.

I went back that afternoon to watch the TRMinator.  (We were done shopping by that point!)

He was throwing the javelin. 

He was set to run one more race, (I had missed the other running events) but then it started to rain, so they ended early and went back to the school.

Since I didn’t have a picture of him running, I told him that we were going to stage one.  I had him run toward me, but someone got in the way when I was about to take the picture, so this is the best I have!

This was TRMinator’s last year.  Next time the Princess will be competing also!  Wow, that’s hard to believe.

Okay, I think that’s enough stalling for now.  On to clean to bathrooms!

Wordless Wednesday

What’s for dinner?

The age old question, “What’s for dinner?”  I’m sure that is asked many times across the country in just as many homes.  People hear it all the time.  It’s even asked in my house on a nightly basis.  Well, let me fill you in on my thoughts on this question.  STOP ASKING!!!

I’m not sure why, but for some reason, the question, “What’s for dinner?” really annoys me.  Whenever anyone in my family asks me that question, I never tell them.  My pat answer to them always is, “Food.”  When they ask what kind of food, I answer, “Food that you don’t have to make.”

I really don’t know why I don’t want to tell them.  It would probably be the family joke if I was kidding when I answer that way.  But I’m not.  I guess it’s just my way of trying to be nice while telling  them to just not worry about what I’m making because you’re going to have to eat it whether you like it or not. 

Personally, I think my family should be grateful that they get to eat food on a daily basis that they don’t have to make, and just leave it at that.  But no, I still hear every day, “What’s for dinner?”  *sigh*  I guess they’ll never learn!

My friend

I have a friend.  She is brave, bold and daring.  When I thought I wanted to move clear across the country, even though I had never been more than an hour from home by myself,  to a place where I didn’t know anyone, and wanted to go to school there, she said that she would go too.  Once we got there and I said I thought it might be fun to go to Las Vegas because I had never been there before, she said “Let’s go!”  My friend was always the fun one, that wasn’t afraid to try things. 

I’m thinking about my friend today because today is her birthday.  She would have been 35.  She left my life almost 14 years ago.  Sometimes it still seems like yesterday. 

When your friend and roommate is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer when you both are 21 years old, it kind of makes your world turn upside down.  It makes the things that you worried about just the day before seem kind of trivial.  Life takes on a somewhat different meaning.  There were many times when life seemed so unfair.  She was supposed to be having fun in college and working towards her degree, not in the hospital having treatments.

Her mom came out for a visit the week of her doctor’s appointment.  Then after her diagnosis, stayed.  Her mom became like my mom.  The bonds that we formed during those trying times are ones that can never be broken.  Even in death.  She and her mom are my eternal friends.

A day at the park

We decided to celebrate Memorial Day by taking a picnic to the park.  My parents joined us for the cloudy, but surprisingly warm day.

We took this gun thing that shoots a ring (I really have no idea what it is called) that G-man got for his birthday.

Then the kids explored a bit- we really have a cool city park, and of course I had to take pictures!

G-man summed it up well when he said, “It’s been a fun day!”