Kyle's Party

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The benefits of education!

I just love it when one child is old enough to do story time for the next in line. Everyone is excited and there are a few moments of peace...aaaaahhhh.

Adventures of the pregnant homeless lady, #2

YIKES!!! We leave in just a little over 3 weeks. How did this happen so fast? So much still to do but things are coming together. It's time to really get moving...literally.

Anyway, so I was looking at mapquest for some directions and made the mistake of just entering the entire trip in at once, from destination to destination to destination to destination to destination to destination to destination and the totals are: 90 hours 17 minutes, 5711.36 miles.

HOLY COW!
That doesn't even count trips within the trip and stops along the way (I am pregnant...I will give a complete review of public restrooms across the country when we're done). So, the question of the day is...do you have a favorite 'in the car' game or activity? I am feeling very blessed to be a parent during a time of technology...when I was young we just had an 8 track player and some coloring books. Now we have mini dvd players, laptop computers, nintendo ds, ipods, etc. and I fully intend to increase the max 'screen time' way past recommended levels. I have put together some nifty travel journals, purchased new crayons, assembled a car friendly craft box, printed out a map of the US so we can chart our course (and cross off all the liscense plates we see), and gathered some favorite books.

90 hours 17 minutes. We're gonna need some more ideas.

Anyone? Even if you are just here because you clicked on a blog and then clicked on a blog...I don't need to actually know you, I just need some tricks up my sleeve. Wish us luck!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

Just the best kids ever! I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day!

Yummy

Never turn your back on a two year old and a bowl of cookie dough.

Katherine's new mouth, phase one

So my lovely daughter seems to have inherited her jaw from the Jarvis side of the fam...not so great. We have a long road of orthodontia ahead of us. To start things off we had a few pesky baby teeth removed to get them out of the way. She was a trooper and mostly just enjoyed her day off of school and large amounts of ice cream.

Unemployed

So, you can move one item from the 'not done' to the 'done' category. I quit my job yesterday! I will work three more shifts and then I'm done. It's a bitter sweet thing. I really do enjoy my time at the hospital and feel so blessed to have a degree that allows me to earn a pretty good paycheck for not a lot of hours. I have been employed at this hospital for 5 1/2 years and I really like the people there, I will miss them. Also, the sense of security we had with that job was wonderful. I never worked a lot...I was a 'PRN' employee, which just means I worked when I was available...which was never very much. There was just something about knowing that if we needed extra money I could always pick up an extra shift and it wouldn't be a big deal. Now if we need extra money I'm not sure what we'll do. We've always figured something out so I'm not really stressed, it's just something new, and I'm not really the kind of person who likes change.

On the other hand I really love not being employed outside of the home. Even though I never worked very much (sometimes it was as little as one shift a month!) I always felt guilty. If I told the staffing office' no' I felt guilty for not being a good employee. If I told the staffing office 'yes' I felt guilty for not being a good Mom. So now I can just get back to feeling guilty for regular things...not spending enough time cleaning because I'm doing something with the kids, or spending too much time cleaning and not enough time with the kids, etc.

I do have to give a shout out to my friends Amy, Caroline, and Kelly who made the schedule work for us this past year. Since September I have been working once a week rather than 'just every once in a while' and we've needed some help with the kiddos. When I told the kids that I was only going to work for 3 more Thursdays the kids were not as excited as I thought they'd be. They asked if they could still go home with their friends on Thursdays or if they had to come home with me, they also wondered if I could maybe go out sometimes so they could have 'fun Daddy dinner'. I guess I should be grateful that it was not a traumatic year for them but I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm!

Okay, so that's it. Goodbye SJMH, it's been nice!