It's been a while since my last post, and because I'm seriously procrastinating getting some PTA paperwork done I think I will give a quick up date as to what is going on in our lives.  I can't even remember the last time I did this so I'm starting with the beginning of the school year which honestly feels like started 6 months ago!  These past few months I don't think I am going to remember with warm fuzzy memories-just saying.  I was so excited when the school year started, had so many plans and then it almost fell completely apart. I had two key board members resign just before school started one of those being my fundraiser. Being a PTA president is a full time job, I do work 40 hours a week sometimes and to have the burden of fundraising was almost too much for me.  Plus our executive board is almost brand new with most having little to non PTA experience   I found myself training people in positions I have never had, the tool kit became my bible!

 We also found out during this time we would be moving, this came at the worst possible time of year for us.  From mid summer to fall is what I like to call "Fair" season, that means Justin is literally working 80+ hours a week and no I'm not exaggerating.  While it was a very stressful time for us and not the ideal time of year to move it was a huge blessing that we were offered the home we are renting now.  Looking back it was definitely one of those times that I don't know how we managed to survive. Justin moved almost all of our stuff after he would get off work at midnight.  He then would stay up to 2 a.m. moving boxes and furniture to the new place. The only way we were able to pull it off was with the help of good friends Joe came over a few times after work to help move a couch or two. The neighbors probably thought we were crazy rolling a freezer down the street in the middle of the night! I had two wonderful friends come over one morning. They packed up my old kitchen then came to the new house and unpacked it the same day.  We have been in the new place just a bit over a month and I love it, I'm almost all the way unpacked I just have a few pictures to hang up!

Now that we are more settled I'm hoping to fall into a routine again (keeping my fingers crossed!)  The girls are doing well in school and are happy.   Jenna decided to do another year of girls scouts and is now a Brownie. She is also participating in a Lego First League, it is a program designed for girls to teach them engineering skills.  They build amazing robots and structures that have motors and moving parts out of Legos. The girls have to use math and critical thinking skills to finish each project then they have to present an oral report to judges detailing their thought process and conclusions that they made. Last week they made a "swing" ride like the kind you find in amusement parks complete with little Lego people taking a ride!  She has also decided to swim again so starting next month she will be taking weekly swimming lessons.
Kayla has been anxiously waiting  two years for her turn to be a girl scout and is more than thrilled that she is finally old enough to join!  She is loving being a new Daisy!  She has also started taking a ballet/tap class and her first performance is this Christmas.


Although the fair is over Justin is still really busy, he is getting his staff ready for the upcoming shopping season.  Also he has been called to the Young Men's Presidency as the secretary not too much of a change from teaching the young men but now he helps out on Tuesday nights more.  He also has really stepped up these past few weeks helping me out, there is no way could I do what I do without him.


Although I am busier now than I think I have ever been in my life I love it, I love being a mom. That I can be on campus with my girls the whole day is a huge blessing. I enjoy taking them to G.S., dance class and on their little play dates.  My  only sadness I feel is that I miss our extended family a lot.  So I'm really happy that once again we will have a houseful for Thanksgiving! We are so blessed to have our dearest friends feast with us, along with my parents and Chad. We will forgive Anthony for missing this year, he is going to Idaho with his new girl friend so he is excused this one time:)  Happy times to look forward to!

Dear sweet mom who feels like she is failing.

Today has been one of those hard "mom" days.    I won't go into a lot of detail lets just say when you freak out over your kids asking you to open a can of mandarin oranges you know it's time to take a step back and breath.  I called Justin, he reminded me not everything has to be done today.  I decided to take a break from packing, cleaning and laundry. When I logged onto my computer this article was the first thing on my browser.  I feel like I'm failing a lot, I never get everything done in a day that I want too, I'm short tempered with my kids, and I lack patience.  As I read this I started to think of all the positive stuff I do with and for my girls, and I started thinking about all the good qualities my girls have and decided right now I need to be more sensitive to their little needs.  I forget that moving may be hard on them, and while not much is changing (we are just moving a few houses down) their world is still being turned upside down.  I shouldn't get so upset when Kayla empties out the donation box for the 4th time in a row, to her they are still her toys.  And Jenna my little pack rat is having a really hard time deciding what to take and what to donate.  I almost feel bad about this, but they have so many toys and I'm just worn out of keeping them all organized!  Needless to say this article gave me hope and made me feel better when I needed it most.  I'm sure most mom's have days like mine so I thought I would share, maybe it will lift someone else spirits like it did mine:)
http://rachelmariemartin.blogspot.com/2012/08/dear-sweet-mom-who-feels-like-she-is.html

Saying Goodbye

Last Sunday I was released from my calling in the Young Women presidency.  I have served these wonderful girls for two and a half years and love them like they were my own daughters.  I have always felt they have done more for me than I have for them.  I will miss these girls dearly, we spent every Sunday and Tuesday night together along with many Saturday's doing service projects. This past week was our annual Young Women cabin trip and I was so happy to have one last trip with them! 

Finding their inner Katniss 

Making activity bags for the Pamona Valley Pediatric ward

Karaoke Los Serranos style.

 Only you can hear the music while singing ....ohh and we blind fold you just to make it more fun 

Love these girlies!

The Hillbilly Jacuzzi

My cute Beehive class.

They made me this very awesome blanket so I will always remember them! 

Me with all the Young Women

I don't think I could have bore to say goodbye without having these past few days with them.  They have a inner light that spreads joy to all they meet, they inspire me to be a better person and

 it has been a honor to have been apart of their lives.  

Kayla Turns 5!!!

Kayla turned 5 last April! I'm a little late posting this, but better late than never! 

Kayla has grown up so much this past year and I have decided I really love this age! She is still asking me about a thousand questions a day, but I love that she get's herself ready in the morning, does her own chores, and helps me cook and bake all with minimal help, which is rather nice! She is lot's of fun to play with and right now our life is filled with Barbies, La La Loopsy, dress-up, Rapunzel dolls, and doll houses!

She of course choose a Rapunzel Party!

She helped decorate her cake and made her first frosting rose-mommy was very proud! 

She wanted Rapunzel hair throughout the house and going out the door, we were a little short-oops!

  

Rapunzel with her trusty friend Pascal!

The Kingdom Dance-very fun

  

Her favorite gift!

Only a frying pan would do for her pinata!

Frying pan was fun, but sister finished the job with one big whack with the bat!  

Love all these little princesses! 

  The following week we had a Mommy & Kayla day at Disneyland! I had so much fun with her, she was very excited to choose everything we did and to be "in charge" of her day!  Her first request to see the princesses! She asked for a Cinderella dress for her Birthday so Cinderella was on the top of our list!

After a 80 minute wait (sigh) we were very happy to see Cinderella! You have no guarantee which princess you will see while visiting the Fantasy Fair and I will only wait in that line once a year on their birthday visit so mom was VERY relieved! 

The complete happiness of your child-worth the 80 minute wait!

Her very BIG Birthday cupcake, it's become a family tradition to get one of these on your birthday! 

Still the happiest place on earth!

Rapunzel is still number #1 so we had to stop by and say hi.

She was our last stop and as you can see Kayla was very worn out! 

I loved our day together, she is so much fun to chat with and filled with so much imagination I just wish I could bottle it up and keep it forever! 

Softball! 

Kayla getting in the "zone" for game day!

 Softball is now over and I'm missing it! 

I loved watching her run to the pitchers mound on her first hit, watching her play in the dirt in the outfield during a game and just doing all the cute little things that kids this age playing T-ball do!  But by far my most favorite was watching her improvement. Seeing her learn to hit, run all the bases and by the end paying a bit more attention to the outfield was the best!  

Pre-School Graduation!

Today my baby graduated from Pre-School...if I could freeze time for just a bit I think I will! My kids are growing up way too fast and I just want to keep them this age for just a little bit longer! 

Yup now she is one smart cookie!

Kayla with Ms. Tami and Ms. Heather

These wonderful ladies have been apart of our lives for three years now! It will feel very different next year not seeing them a few times a week-it's a good thing we will see them on Sunday's at church or else a lot more tears would have been shed today! 

Hurray for Graduation day!!!!  

Our beautiful girl is all ready for Kindergarten! I will miss her dearly when she goes. She is my little shopping/errand running buddy and the house will seem very quiet in the mornings without her little chatter!  

Jenna tuns 7!

This past week we celebrated Jenna's 7th birthday!  I love birthdays especially my kids birthday. What a wonderful way to celebrate someones life, to celebrate them for who they are and to honor that their existence is important! So yes I kinda make a big deal out their special day...I mean you only will turn 7 once in your lifetime! So in honor of Jenna's day I'm going to brag shamelessly about her and her recent accomplishments!  

She has been working extra hard in school  and received her first Hot Shot award in February!  This is her and Mr. Mackessy her principal-we love this guy, he is so great with the kids and she looks forward to seeing him every morning during drop off.  

She is playing softball  with Kayla and is doing great! She got player of the game for hitting the ball into the outfield in game #2 

This is more for fun, we went up to Big Bear to play in the snow! Jenna got really brave and went down some really good hills by herself towards the end, but she was a little nervous at first so the first run was made with Dad. 

We took the kids bowling last weekend.  Jenna bowled for the first time the correct way with the fingers in the holes-I thought she was going to break her wrist throwing the ball because she kept twisting her arm funny, but she didn't so of course I worried for nothing:) 

She got her first pair of glasses in January! 

 

Just to highlight a few more things, she is in Girl Scouts and she loves it. Last time I picked her up she told me  those girls are like my sisters.  

Jenna finally decided to ride her bike without training wheels...we took them off at the beginning of the school year and she struggled with it.  My brothers tried to teach her during Thanksgiving, they actually helped her a lot but they left, I got busy, and she soon lost interest. Then two weeks ago she just got on and took off in typical Jenna style.  

Last week she decided she wanted her hair short, we all love it! 

Yup my girl has grown so much this past year!  I started crying as I made her cake; last year when she turned 6 she requested a Rapunzel cake...fast forward to this year and now I'm trying to find electric pink, electric purple, black that is really black (not gray) food coloring for a Monster High skull cake!  How did we go from a princess cake to a skull cake in just one short year????  My only comfort came the morning of her birthday. She has been saying for months she is not "into" princesses any more, but Friday morning she asked if I thought it would be ok if she wore one of her princess dresses to Disneyland that night.  I couldn't resist giving her a hug when I told her yes that would be fine! 

We started her big day a day early and went to Build-A-Bear with her friends. 

Taking 15 kids through Downtown Disney is no small accomplishment!   

Jenna and her friend Callie  

All the girls putting their love hearts into Jenna's bear

 

Jenna and her new bear Clumsy 

Silly girls! 

We came back to our house for Cake

I'm rather proud of this cake, it's the first one I have ever carved into a shape from scratch! 

The Monster High girls were along side to celebrate! 

One very happy girl! 

Friday March 23rd or as Kayla called it "her for real birthday" 

Celebrating at school-her teacher sprinkling birthday glitter on her!

She brought cup-cakes for her class to share, this is the "girl" table 

She came home to find a new Monster High bike waiting for her 

Kayla gave her Abby Abdominal and Laguna Blue from the Skull Shores line

Jenna wanted a picture of the new BFF's together- her words

 

After opening family gifts we went to Disneyland

We finished our night by buying her a cupcake and singing happy birthday during the fireworks show

it was the perfect end to a wonderful day! 

Happy Birthday my sweet Jenna, you gave me the greatest gift of my life by making me your mom 7 years ago and not a day goes by that I don't thank God for you...you are my miracle baby and I love you the most!

Guess I'm not super women

Motherhood is hard.  I thought that as my babies grew into little girls that I would be less tired, have more time and I actually worried how I would fill my days.  I always knew I would be a stay at home mom, and I envisioned being room mom, helping out with sport teams, hanging with other like minded mom's.  What I didn't know is how awful the guilt would be if I said no to any one of those things.  I had these dreams of being able to keep a perfectly kept home, spread a healthy dinner on the table at 6 on the dot, be team mom, have a demanding church calling, help out in the class room, serve on the PTA board, help my daughter sell a million boxes of girl scout cookies and still be a happy smiling wife that my husband loves coming home to.  Well my friends I'm here to tell you it's IMPOSSIBLE!!!  

I'm not entirely sure how it happened or what triggered my breakdown on Friday.  Myself I have two theories the first feeling like a single mom. I normally have handled Justin's work schedule fine. In the past yes it would be hard but I never felt like I couldn't do it, this past month I have felt like I'm barely treading water without him around...second our housing situation we qualified for a home loan, we were looking at houses only to find out that our old home in CO has a title problem that will not be cleared up till the end July and we can't buy a house till that is taken care of. Then we find out our landlord is not renewing our lease that is up the end of April and will not let us stay just a few more months...did I mention we are going to mexico in April and that we will have two days after we get home to be out of our house with it cleaned top to bottom.  That means I have a little over 4 weeks to pack.  We are now looking at apartment's and storage units and thinking maybe we should stay in the apartment just a bit longer to save a little more for a down payment.  Which could mean our girls may have to change schools in the fall and then when we buy a house in 6-9 months they may have to change schools again!  The only plus side to that would be me not being PTA president. Don't get me wrong I love to serve and I WANT to do it, but after my weekend I have to slow down and things are going to have to change and if that means not being PTA president that is fine with me. We are going to try to keep the girls in the same school and I'm looking into getting them transferred I just can't do it till we actually move-so frustrating! Also I don't ever want to rent another house again.  I hate the feeling of not being settled that our landlord could stop making the payments or decide to sell at a moments notice...I need a place of my own I can't handle that kind of stress anymore. 

So this is how my "breakdown" happened.  I woke up on Friday with a pinched nerve in the back of my neck.  I could barely move. It was by far some of the worst pain I have ever felt.  Later on in the afternoon my ears started "clicking" back and forth, I felt an intense pain in my head I could not open my eyes and as I started talking to Kayla I knew what I wanted say but my words would not come out.  Since then I have been stuttering  and slurring my words. If I concentrate really hard I can complete a sentence but it's like I really have to think about what I want to say.  It has gotten better over the past few days but Justin was scared that I had a stroke so he forced me to go see a doctor (I felt it was just the after math of a really bad headache-yes stupid I know) Come to find out my blood pressure is really high, in January it was normal.  Going over my chart with the doctor my BP has always been fine.  She starts to ask what's going on in my life and as I tell her everything I do, she's looking at me like I'm going to stop talking at any minute -but I don't, my list goes on and on.  She quickly came to the concussion that I'm too stressed out (so happy I made that co-pay) So she told me to cancel everything and rest this week, come back on Thursday to see if my blood pressure is down.  She also ordered lot's of blood work which she will go over with me on my Thursday appointment. She even offered to write me a doctors note excusing me from all my duties- I laughed as I envisioned telling my kids no mommy can't cook you dinner here is my note :)  

In all reality I can't cancel everything but I did cancel a lot of things so I'm making progress.  In two weeks my schedule would have been considerably lighter anyway.  Right now it's not so much the schedule as it is the living situation.  Justin oh how I love that guy he is my rock, he is the yang to my yin so of course he is not worried about it at all.  How I dream one day to be like him completely calm on a still lake...where I on the other hand is living my life in a ocean of peaks and waves just trying to stay afloat.

My doctor did offer me wonderful drugs to help me calm down, but I have to stay a functioning mom who can drive and take care of my children so I turned them down, but with the promise I would meditate, take down time for myself and remember to breath.  

I feel really embarrassed by it all, I feel weak and that I am letting many people down.  The only reason why I'm blogging about it is because I feel deep down a significant change has occurred inside of me, that in a positive way I will never be the same again and I want my girls to know it's o.k. to struggle and that through those struggles you emerge a better more whole person.   I still need to work on the guilt part of saying no, but by nature that is my personality so right now I'm just trying to set it aside.  I am doing much better today,  I feel more calm and  more peaceful which I think is why I have only stuttered once today (that I'm aware of).  

I do have to say thank you to my amazing friends.  First word I was going to the doctor and next thing I know Kayla is being picked up from school and being treated to lunch at chick-fil-a then back to her little friends house for a play date.  Another friend calls to say she is bringing over dinner! I'm telling you, people may laugh at Mormons because whenever anything significant happens good or bad we make a dinner, but I have to say having a nice hot yummy dinner delivered to your door is heaven! I always feel so loved when that happens :)  And to my old friends who are not here just seeing your positive thoughts on FB makes me feel loved and that I can go on with my life.   

So now you know my little secret I'm not super women, I can't do it all, I tried to pretend I could and obviously it has turned out not so great.  So now I'm looking at it in a positive way that being forced to say no is not such a bad thing after all.  

My 34th Birthday!!!!!!

This year my birthday was perfect, yup perfect I tell ya! My kiddos did a great job planning (with a little help from their Dad and Grandma)  

I ended up having a Minnie Mouse themed party (Thank you Kayla!) 

The girls choose this very cute Minnie Cake

Kayla bought me a Minnie Mouse watch-in her words Mommy don't you just love Minnie Mouse?

We started my Birthday eating breakfast with Minnie Mouse-loved it!

My cute parents and hubby :)

 So glad my Mom & Dad flew out to visit me! 

My birthday cupcake...it was more than just a little good it was heaven!

This picture cracks me up!!

 Somehow Justin and my dad ended up on the Ariel ride together; don't they look thrilled????

My sweet family gave me the best Birthday I could ask for! As you can tell it was more about the kids than me, but that's what made it great!  I love that my kids put so much of themselves into my day, and to see their enthusiasm to celebrate me in the only way they know how made it perfect!