Scraped Knees and Owies

Do you remember scraping your knees over and over as a kid? I remember how it stung. I remember mom always making it better and then running back out and doing it again!

Yesterday, as we were enjoying the good weather, I realized that scraped knees and owies must be a sign of summer time...it's time to stock-up on bandaids and those magic kisses that make everything all better.

Maya fell and hit her head in the middle of her forhead. As she was running over to me crying she fell again and this time I heard the crack as her head connected with the sidewalk! Ouch! One of the bigger goose-eggs I've seen.

Some ice, kisses and a nap and it's all forgotten!

I think watching knees get scraped and kids fall is more painful for me than them sometimes! That awful sinking feeling as you watch what you know is going to turn into an owie. I have to look away as they run haphazard down the sidewalk or they'll miss out on the carefree moments of not knowing that they're about to hit the ground. I'm just glad that I'm the one with the magic kiss power now!

A Romantic Dinner for 5...

Ryan and I celebrated out 8th wedding anniversary on Monday, May 12th.

What a wonderful 8 years it has been.

This past month has been particularly busy for us. Ryan has traveled to Texas to be with his dad twice now (and is there right now). When he's here he's squeezing in long work hours and time with the kids. So we scrapped any plans we had thought of for actually doing something to celebrate our anniversary...just meeting everyone's needs seemed more important this week. So when Ryan rolled in the door late on Monday evening I decided I'd make a stab at creating a romantic dinner.

Hayley loves to use the word "romantic" whenever she can. She doesn't fully understand what it means so sometimes the sentances she comes up with are pretty comical. When I told her and Maya that I wanted to create a romantic restaurant for mommy and daddy and they were to be the waitresses she was so excited! "So romantic!"

Here was my plan:
-Change mommy into some dressy clothes and get make up on by the time daddy got home (it had been one of those days!)
-Make BBQ Chicken salad and (leftover) homemade rolls
-Set a seperate table with candles for us
-Make the craft table into the kids table (with their own candles of course)
-Put the kids in aprons and have them meet daddy at the door and welcome him to the romantic restaurant.
-Have quiet music playing to create "the mood"
-Enjoy a semi-quiet conversation over dinner before it was time to do dishes, baths and the bedtime routine.

Considering, I came up with this plan at 4:30pm and I was in sweats and was planning on leftovers for dinner...things went pretty well.

But...

Right before Ryan got home, Alice woke up starving. Dinner wasn't quite ready. I managed to push play on that music and the girls met Ryan at the door in aprons. Can't say it was quiet and romantic though....high pitched screaming, occasional fighting, and running around with excitement. I told Ryan we were short on kitchen help and sent him to finish chopping a few things while I fed Alice. As the sweet waitresses hung on daddy and made all sorts of loud noise I heard Ryan yell to me...."This is so romantic!" We had a seperate table so once we all did sit down and eat you'd think we could have a couple minutes of quiet conversation. Oh no, Maya wouldn't stay on her chair and we had a constant dialog going on with the other table. Okay, well we tried!

I guess the lesson learned is...dinner for 5 just isn't romanitc!

But it'll make for a fun memory to laugh about when we celebrate our future anniversaries. Someday, we may even miss the fact that there are no little girls to get giddy and wound up because Dad and Mom are eating at a perfect "romantic restaurant"!

And for those of you that may think I'm complaining...in this season of our lives, I'm okay with the fact that our anniversary may never include lavish weekend get-a-ways (although it doesn't hurt to dream!) but I sure am glad that I'm married to someone that can laugh with me at our feeble attempt to be romantic!

Caterpillars & Butterflies

There have been so many caterpillars outside our house last week. I have to be careful not to step on them. Mom almost stepped on one when we came out of the store one day. I love caterpillars and butterflies. Butterflies have pretty wings. I like to watch them fly. Caterpillars turn into butterflies. One day we made pretend caterpillars and butterflies and put them in our yard. They looked so pretty.

-Hayley

(Note from mom: these were such fun crafts to make...the caterpillars are just egg cartons, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and pom poms. The butterflies are made out of coffee filters--use water-color paints and they bleed into each other, or if you use markers just sprinkle with water after you color. Then paint clothes pins and clip them in the middle then spread their wings. You can clip them onto curtains, lamps or whatever. Keep a pile of those coffee filters in your craft drawer--I'm always coming up with new uses for them--they make the best snowflakes.)

Veldon's Blog

Ryan's Dad (Veldon Messick) has been fighting cancer for over 4 years now. We are so grateful for every day we have with him. Right now he is very sick.

We're creating a new blog to post information and status about Veldon. It's:
http://veldonsblog.blogspot.com

If you would like to post something to this blog, send an email to Ryan and JaNae and we'll post it. Hopefully this will be an efficient and effective way to share information.

-Ryan and JaNae

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to my Mom!

Thanks, Mom, for being my friend as well as my mother.

Thanks for being such a great example of the joy of motherhood.

Happy Mother's Day to my Mother-in-law!
Thanks for raising such a wonderful husband for me and loving me too!

I feel so lucky to have such wonderful mothers...

and so happy for my children that they have such loving Grandmas!

"I Am a Mother"

I borrowed this book from a friend and read it this past week. What an amazing book. I think I need to read it at least once a year. It inspired me to really view all the mundane tasks of motherhood differently. It's always good to be reminded that what we do as mothers (and fathers too!) is so very important. I am a mother and a stay-at-home mom by choice, but there are times that I forget that I wouldn't want it any other way! A few of the thoughts that I had while I was reading it were:

-I am an example of motherhood to my children. Will they want to be mothers by watching me or will my outward frustration with the daily grind of motherhood make them want to be anything but moms? I want to show them that I really do find joy in motherhood by having more patience each day and finding more humor in life's frustrations.

-The author brought up the point that in world today we, who value motherhood, have the ability to be a great strength to one another. But so often we become each other's greatest source of pain as we compare and judge ourselves and each other. We need to remember that we are all trying our best to be "good moms" using different aproaches and techniques. But we all matter because "a mother's work is God's work." I want to be a better support to my peers who are also trying to fulfil their role as mothers.


-So many other thoughts...but I'm out of time...so go pick up this book and enjoy!

All My Dreams Come True!

I turned 30 today! Pretty crazy. It sounds so old and yet I'm so happy with where I'm at in life that I can't really be depressed. I am so blessed to have a wonderful husband and three little girls that I love with all my heart! Life is good.

I had a wonderful day. Ryan and the girls made sure they spoiled me. I had requested smoothies instead of a cake so the girls made me a play-dough cake so I could still blow out all my many candles.

But the most exciting part was that all my dreams came true...let me explain...

About 2 years ago I was a little shocked at how far I had come down the "mommy-road" when I admitted that my three biggest material desires were

1. A mini-van (yes, I really really wanted one!)

2. A wheat grinder

3. A Bosch mixer

Not the same list that I had 10 years ago I admit!

In the last 2 years we have bought a van:

and a wheat grinder:

And...today the final wish was granted!

I can't beging to describe how fun it is to watch the mixer do the mixing after mixing it by hand every week for 2 years! We just really love homemade bread in our house and can't get enough of it.

Of course, the girls were more excited about the box that the mixer came in then the actual machine...but that gave us lots of time to whip up some cookies!

....hummm.....now I guess I need to come up with a mid-life crisis wish-list!