Missing the Bus

Who knew that missing the bus was such a traumatic event for a young child? Apparently, not me. Last week, we missed the bus one morning... let me repeat that - ONE morning! Ever since then, however, Nia has felt it quite important that at every prayer she says, she prays that we will not be late for the bus again.

To her credit, she was super cute on the morning after. She got up early, earlier than I did. She came into my room and woke me up. When we went down for breakfast, she leaned over to me and softly said "Heavenly Father whispered in my ear this morning to wake me up so we wouldn't be late again." Ahhh.... what a sweet and pure soul.

:)

My New Novel

I started my second Romance Novel this week. It was more difficult to start my second one than it was for my first time. I think that has to do with higher expectations. With my first one, there were no expectations. Now, I have some experience and knowledge I didn't have the first time around so I think I am holding myself to a higher standard. Rightly so, I suppose. In any case, I am quite excited about it. I have added a word tracker to the bottom of my blog so you can track my progress if you want. I am also adding it below:





My main character, the heroine, is named Amilee. If I had another daughter, which isn't likely, I would want to name her that. One thing that is fun about writing books is that you can use all the names that your spouse wouldn't let you use when naming your children. In my first book, my character is named Anna. When we had our first child, I wanted to name her Anna and Jason wanted Nia. We compromised with Annania, but we call her "Nia" for short. Thus, I named my first main character Anna. :)

Writing my first novel was one of my most enjoyable adventures. I hope this one is that way also.

Wish me luck!

:)

Nia's first day of school

Today was Nia's first day of kindergarten. She looked so adorable! She had a lot of fun although she was a bit distressed that recess was not as long as she thought it would be.

Justis was not happy with the fact that Nia was gone all morning. He was so glad when we finally went to pick her up. He has been more than a handful today but thankfully that is the exception, not the rule, for him.

One other note: I did not cry! Nia did not either so we made it through the day without tears. :)


:)

Mr. Destructo

For reasons unknown to me, my son has been Mr. Destructo today. This is a picture of my room. It may not look really bad, but please understand that it was worse than this... I just picked up the "whites" before taking the picture for obvious reasons.

Here's how it went down... While Nia was at school, I was on a conference call with a new client. My saving grace during this call was my husband who had stayed home until the cable repair man came out. It was one of those "He'll be there between 8-10" and luckily, for my sake, he showed up at 10am which meant my husband was home for my entire call (which was 9-11). As it was, Justis kept coming into my room (By day, an office, by night, a bedroom! It's magic!) wanting me to go with him so he could get an assortment of snacks.

After picking Nia up at the bus stop, we went home and had lunch and then naps. Justis was not happy about going down for a nap but the lull of the music did it's job. While he was napping, I did a little bit of work until I could no longer keep my eyes open. Finally, I laid down... Come sweet sleep, come. No, not you destructo, sleep!

While I was sleeping, I was awakened to a very hazy state by my son saying something. I wasn't sure what it was but it finally came to me that he had brought me a towel for a blanket. With a smile, I put the blanket over my legs and quickly fell back into lala land. What I didn't know, however, is that it was all a ploy to keep me asleep so he could wreak havoc all around me. I woke up a few times, only to realize that he was throwing every sock and every bit of folded "whites" onto the floor. He was obviously decorating. At one point, he thought it quite entertaining to open my eyelids, being dutifully attentive to each one. If that wasn't enough, he brought up a box of crayons and hit me on the face, a bottle of elmer's glue and pretended to decorate my face with it (thankfully he didn't open it), and the camera we had used today to take pictures of Nia's first day of school slammed into my face with the word "Smile!".

Finally, the culmination of it all bought me rudely to the real world, only to find that my once clean room was now littered with an assortment of panties and underwear (I wouldn't dare call my son's underwear "panties" :)), socks, and no longer folded whites. As if that isn't bad enough, I know he had at least one "Halls" lozenges, bit my daughters toe, and was very liberal with the tasting of toothpaste.

I had thought that Mr. Destructo had disappeared from our home a while ago. Apparently, he came back today. Hopefully it is only for a brief visit. :)

:)

Our Vacation: Sleeping in Special Places

When I was young, one of our favorite privileges was to "sleep in special places." If we were good, on Friday night we could sleep in special places like in the family room, the hall, on the couch, or an array of other odd locations.

For Labor Day Weekend, we had debated going out of town with my parents. I looked into some locations but in the end, it would cost us several hundred dollars to leave. However, I didn't just want to stay home because I knew if we did that, we would end up not doing anything except house/yard work.

My solution? Sleeping at my parent's house. It was just like old times! We got to sleep in special places! We pretended we were on vacation this whole weekend. The only thing we did at home was sleep there Saturday night (Jason had church meetings in the morning) and Jason mowed the lawn today. Other than that, we were on vacation.

It's funny that at almost 30 years old, I still love sleeping at my parent's house. I still like sneaking up to my parent's room in the morning (I sneak only to avoid the following of my little ones) and crawling into bed with my mom to talk or just lay there together.

We went out to dinner, had a picnic, had a bar-b-que, watched movies, shopped, and hung out. What a great vacation!

:)

Our Pee Pee Party

We have a tradition in our family... it's called the "Pee Pee Party." This came about when I was potty training my daughter a couple of years ago. I can't remember if I read about it or if it was just something I came up with, but when we potty train a child, we celebrate their success with a Pee Pee Party.

The first picture is a picture of the diarrhea cake. The second picture is the toilet cake. The third picture is our family that came. We are all wearing Spiderman masks because no one really wanted to admit that they were attending a "pee pee party". Well, that and aside from the toilet theme, my son particularly requested Spiderman hats. Apparently, there are no Spiderman party hats, only Spiderman masks. Thus we see...

I have to say, our family really are good sports for attending our Pee Pee parties. There are no demonstrations, but showing off underwear (for the trainee) is allowed.

:)

Working Like a Dog

These past two weeks I've been working like a dog! I am incredibly grateful to be able to work from home so I can be home with my kids. I love being home with them and I also love my work so I am very blessed.

I apologize for not having blogged for a few days, but what can I say, I've been busy! I want you all to know, however, that I truly do appreciate you checking my blog and making comments. :)