Day 293

Day two of David being gone....DONE!  We started off our morning dropping Joel off at school and doing swim lessons with Connor.  He had a MUCH better day today in the water and even kicked his feet instead of freezing when he went under the water! YEA!  It is fun being in a swim class that is mommy and me for one more year...this is it after this year!  It is nice too because I get to talk a bit with my friend from high school and our boys get to try swimming together and gave one another high fives today...so cute!

I brought Connor home and fed him lunch and did story time and then naps. 

After Joel had swim lessons, I met up with my friend at a park and the boys played while we chatted.  It was nice being back at the big park where I used to take Daisy.  I have not been over there in a long time, but the boys had so much fun kicking their balls all over the field and it was nice catching up with one of my favorite people!

We walked home and I decided to take the boys out for pizza tonight.  It was one of the BEST ideas I have had in a really long time!  Not only were they SILENT as they ate the pizza, which means I got 30 minutes of quiet time at a restaurant, but they also were really happy, which made me really happy!  After dinner, we walked outside and ran into my friend Jennifer and her son.  They were on a mother/son date night as well!  The boys all ran around for a bit before Jennifer went into the restaurant to eat.  We also got to talk and catch up...HAPPY TIMES!

I brought the boys home and put them to bed.  Then it was chamomile tea and bath time for me!  Then I snuggled down and watched Deadliest Catch.  Now it is off to bed with me so I can get up and work in the morning.  I only have 3 weeks left of working in the morning time and I am really happy about that.  I don't have to get up so early from then on AND the boys won't have to be at day care all day for one day.  I like being home with them and 5 hours of work a week will be enough for me while they are growing up...I don't want to miss too much!

Have a great night all and happy Tuesday!  Tomorrow begins the final stretch of this week...WOW!

Day 292

Day one without David here down!  Ok, he WAS here this morning to help out, and I am so so grateful for that!  It was a busy Monday morning getting Joel ready for school, Connor off to speech and back, and then dropping David off at a car repair shop to get his car.....not such a happy memory paying that repair bill lol.

After all of that, Connor and I went to the Santa Ana Zoo.  There is this mommy group I recently joined and, while I have a lot of friends in this group, I never seem to see any of them at these designated mommy days lol.  This is my third event I have gone to and no one but Connor and I have been there.  Well, we will see if anyone is at the next one on Friday...hoping to meet some other moms!  Connor and I had a lot of fun looking at all of the animals.  He really liked watching the little monkeys and I enjoyed looking at the Bald Eagle.  We took a train ride around the farm animal area and then headed out for lunch.  We got to eat lunch down in Tustin at one of our favorite restaurants, Cafe Rio, and then it was back home to get Joel and for Connor to take a nap.

It was a fun but busy afternoon!  After Connor's nap, my neighbor and friend from church kindly accepted my plea for help and watched my kids so I could go to work...so thankful to have her around but she is moving across town in two weeks and then I will be all alone on this side of town again :-( 

After work, I had a few minutes at home before the boys arrived...so nice to enjoy the quite 2-3 minutes!  I got dinner ready and when they came in the house, we all sat down and ate!

I am so happy I made it through my first night without David!  I am hoping tomorrow will go just as well and that I can keep it up.  The only thing I truly can't do without him here is put the trash in our dumpsters, but I am so thankful I have wonderful neighbors and people from church I can call for help on that....oh how I hope to be able to help someone else someday as much as people have helped ME!  Have a good night all....off to watch the Bachelorette!

Day 291

The beginning of a new week is here!  With that, I am hoping the beginning of a new attitude for my kids as well! OY! What a week last week!  So happy that we get new weeks to try and start over as parents AND hopefully children.

Today was good, but different.  We went to church, my kids in my Sunday School class were very good and I had a great time teaching them and singing.

We got home and got the news that my parents BOTH have the flu.  We were supposed to visit my great-aunt at my grandma's old house today.  So we DID end up going, but without my parents.  We had a nice time chatting.  My great-aunt is my grandma's last living sister and she is 94.  It was really nice being with her, giving her presents, having all of the little kids and big kids sing to her, and share memories.  My brother, sister-in-law, and niece were there as well.

After the little birthday party, we went to a restaurant called Tony Roma's.  When I was younger and after my grandfather passed away, for many many years we would go out to eat dinner on Sundays with my grandma.  That particular restaurant was one of her favorites.  It STILL doesn't disappoint...man is the food good there!  It made me very nostalgic, though, to go back in time and be there with my parents and brother and grandma.  Those were some good times!

After dinner, we drove back home and got the kids ready for bed.  David is heading out in the morning for Colorado for the week, so it is just me versus them for a while lol.  Hope everyone had a good day today!  It is going to be an interesting week flying solo with the kids, but hoping that happy memories can me made along the way.

Day 290

Saturday has come and gone and I am not sure I am ready for that!  It was an exhausting but fun day today.  My two boys have been fighting SO much lately!  Not such a happy moment.  The happy moment was finding this app called Pandora on my phone a while back that plays preschool music.  I hook it up in my car and the kids stayed quiet almost all the way down to Legoland today! 

We went to Legoland for the day and spent about 4 hours there riding rides and having fun.  It was nice to get out on this beautiful Saturday day and I am thankful we had a free pass to get David in.  Connor loves to ride a dinosaur coaster, and Joel had so much fun excavating fake dinosaur bones.  Fun was had by all and the boys were really tired on the way home!

We pulled off the freeway and had dinner at Panera Bread...David hadn't eaten at that one before and he LOVED the dinner!  The boys sat and ate nicely while this total crazy child screamed, ran around, and threw things at people.  This is not a very large restaurant and I can't help but wonder if the parents heard the man who came up to US and said, "I would just like to thank you for doing such a great job with your kids.  You have such well behaved children and my wife and I really appreciate that!"  Not sure if they did hear it, but it meant a lot to me, especially after how Joel and Connor have acted this week.  It is SUCH hard, exhausting work being a parent 24 hours a day, so I am glad it is paying off with the discipline and love.  It was a happy moment to get that feedback!

We came home and the boys snuggled down on my bed together to watch Finding Nemo while I went to my parent's house and fed their dog (both of my parents are down with the flu today...REALLY hoping they caught it AFTER they left my house yesterday...don't want any shared germs lol)

We got an e-mail from our puppy's human mom saying that we can go visit the puppy next week!  So excited about that and I LOVED the pictures she sent to us as well!  Hope all of you have a great rest of the night and enjoy the one day left of the weekend!

Day 289

Friday is here!!!  This week has given me a run for my money, and body, but I made it to Friday!

Started out the day by dropping Joel off at school and then I took Connor to Pretend City.  I was doing this because there was a group of moms who were supposed to be there as well...so said the Evite anyway, but I didn't see one other person there that I knew.  Didn't stop Connor and me from having a great time walking around and playing for the next 2 hours!  It was some really great one on one time for us and he was SO tired when we left....YAY!

We picked Joel up from school and I put Connor down for a nap.  Joel and I got to hang out and talk about his school day and what he was going to do this weekend.  Nice time with my two boys today!

David came home and we made chimichangas for dinner and had my parents over.  We had a nice family meal and then my parents watched the boys so David and I could LEAVE them and go to the movies...I honestly can't remember the last time the two of us went out alone...sometime back in May maybe?  It was nice to get out for a couple of hours.  We saw Men in Black III and it was really good!

We came home and are now ready to go to sleep!  Big Saturday tomorrow, and hoping for a happy moment filled weekend!  Have a great night all!

Day 288

I thought today would be a lot sadder for me.  It wasn't.  There is that old cliche that time heals all wounds.  When you are in the thick of it, you don't want to hear that, but it is true.  Our sweet puppy that we had for just 11 months and was a little over a year old died a year ago today.  She was struck by a car after running outside after a bird.  The events that followed, I will never forget.  That day, Daisy's story came to be.  One puppy taught so many people to find the joy and to remember what is really important in this life.  I will be forever grateful for the memory of our sweet girl.  There are times I still think about her and shed a tear or two, but the horror of that day and the heartbreak really has faded.  What a gift it is from God to have time.  I do not believe that there is "time" in Heaven like there is here one Earth, but we are so blessed to have "time" to move us forward in life, experience new things, appreciate other things, and have space in between the really bad things that happen to us.

Today was just a day.  Not a sad day.  Very much like a year ago today, the boys had swim lessons.  But unlike a year ago where going to swim lessons was the thing I needed to do to keep breathing and being able to not crumble into a million pieces from our tragedy, today was just about focusing on keeping Connor floating and kicking and watching Joel move through the water with his ever growing arms and legs.  Today was about going to the local library for craft time and reading books with the boys.  I didn't even cry today like I thought I would.  Time has passed, and I absolutely understand my Heavenly Father's plan for me and WHY Daisy had to leave us when she did.  I could not possibly have taken care of a dog that needed to go out many times a day to the bathroom and to run around, be fed, brushed, and loved.  I was in the hospital so much in the past 12 months that I feel like I missed most of Joel's Kindergarten year.  How COULD I have taken care of a sweet animal all the while trying to just survive and take care of my children as much as a did?

Today was about teaching Joel a lesson and figuring out the best way to discipline him for being unkind to his brother.  It was a day of shopping and getting shoes for David for church.  Today was simply a day....and that is a happy moment.  I will always miss my sweet dog, but as we look forward to getting a new one, Daisy's biological sister, I know that Daisy has been looking down on us and reminding me in little ways to continue to live as she would want me to...finding the joy in the little things, like the wind on my face or the laughter of my children.  I believe in the past year I have done well to honor Daisy's memory by being the person she thought I was.  Have a blessed night!

Day 287

Well, here I am on a Wednesday night!  Today was a bright sunny day full of happy moments and sunshine.

I started off my morning at work and only worked for one hour because my caseload is changing a bit in the next month.  It was good to get home and spend a few hours, before I had to pick Joel up from school, doing laundry and putting away the kid's clothes.

I picked Joel up from school and we got to go to Soup Plantation for lunch!  It was a nice treat and it was SO funny because Joel wanted to get the salad items himself.  Well, he got to the shredded squash and scooped, and scooped, and scooped.  I knew what he was thinking, but just to make sure, when we got to the cheese, I asked him if he wanted some cheese on his salad.  He told me that he already HAD cheese on his salad, so no thanks.  I put a little cheese on his salad anyway.  He ate a TON of the shredded squash....I finally asked him, "You know that isn't cheese right?"  He told me it tasted like cheese to him! LOL Good to know!  Maybe the next time I make tacos or taco salad we will have shredded squash instead of cheese! A healthy alternative!

On the way back from lunch, we stopped by my dad's work to say hello.  Well, there was a little bird outside of my dad's office.  At first we thought it might be hurt, so my dad had headed out to put it out of its misery.  It was ONE angry bird full of life!  So we put it in a box and I brought it home.  I am not sure if baby birds (this one if it lives can fly off in about a week) can live without their mothers, but we will see.  It has been chirping all evening so fingers crossed that it will be alright!

I did work this afternoon and Joel came with me to wait for David to pick him up for Occupational Therapy.  We had a nice time spending all afternoon alone together. 

After work and dinner, David went upstairs to watch a hockey game and Connor and I sat on the couch and snuggled and he ate my orange...that was nice of him lol.  He was so cute sucking on it and munching that I couldn't resist....little kids eating just amazes me sometimes!  They have the cutest mouths and are so happy when they chew...it is fun watching my kiddos eat....is that weird?

So off to bed I go!  Swim lessons in the morning and then hoping to make it to a playgroup craft time with some other mothers before Joel's swim lessons.  Have a great night and appreciate your loved ones, animals, people, whomever....time goes by so quickly and you might miss out on the joy of having them around.....