Grad school here I come

So I finally made the final decision that I am going to go ahead and go to graduate school. I think that all the struggles that my family will face will be worth it. I know that it will be hard but I think that it is something that I am meant to do. I feel led and I finally have a peace about my decision. I have asked God to put up roadblocks if this is not supposed to happen and instead I have a peacefulnfeeling and the path seems to be cleared. So I'm going.

Kami finally lost that front tooth that has been HANGING out of the front of her mouth for the last week. It was really gross and I am so glad it is out. I think the other one is loose now. She looks a little too old with that tooth out!! Please pray for my relationship with her. I am really struggling with her and how to discipline her appropriately. Her drama is just too much for me to handle. It is a constant struggle and I feel like I am fighting a losing battle on a daily basis. I am going to read The Five Love Languages of Children because it was recommended by a good friend. If you have anything else to suggest, I am all ears!

Tomorrow I am going to hopefully finalize the curriculum I have been working on for the past year. Tim is off for President's Day so he and Taylor will get some time together and I can go work at the church building. As bad as this sounds, it will be a relief to be finished with this. I have enjoyed teaching, but I am completely burnt out. And writing lesson plans is just difficult work! It will also be satisfying to see it all out in print and in notebooks. Hopefully it will be useful for other teachers as well.

I am not exactly sure whqt we rare doing for dinner this week. I still need to talk to the kids and see what the want to choose for their days. I do know that we are having balsamic chicken, friend potatoes and roasted broccoli for tomorrow night. I will post a meal plan tomorrow.

Meal Plan Sunday??

Tomorrow is going to be crazy bananas so I am trying to get ahead of the game. :) We had an interesting week last week so we didn't follow our meal plan exactly as I had hoped, but that's life, right?

Monday: carino's take-out
Tuesday: Taylor's choice--grilled cheese
Wednesday: Mac and cheese and ham
Thursday:MYO pizza
Friday: Tim's choice--balsamic chicken and fried potatoes
Saturday: Kami's choice
Sunday: small group
Monday: pork chops and roasted veggies

I am going to Kami's Valentine's Day party tomorrow and forgot that I got assigned to bring sandwiches. We barely have enough bread for 2 sandwiches so I will have to go to the store. I might as well do all my shopping since I'll be out. I also need to finish up the Bible class curriculum I have been writing for the last year. I am in the home stretch!!! Then I am planning activities for the Financial Peace kids classes that start in March. And I need to work on my Time Value of Money problems for school. There are just not enough hours in the day. Or maybe there are and I just don't have enough energy to put all those hours to use!! Lol!

Valentines!

Last year I bought Valentines for my kids to give away. I hated it! I love handmade things much more than store bought and that was the very first year my kids gave away store bought Valentines. But they enjoyed picking them out so it was fine. BUT this year I had time to make them, so make them we did! I enlisted my little man to help me out since it was such a big job....Ok in reality it would have gone twice as fast without his help, but the pictures and memories are worth much more than my time! If you have never made old crayons into new crayons, here is how you do it:

Step 1: Peel the crayons.


Step 2: Break crayons into smaller pieces. Usually you will use a bigger mold than I am using this time so using a mallet or hammer wouldn't be necessary. But I had 60 of these bad boys to make, so smaller equaled better this year!


Step 3: Scatter the crayons in the mold. I bought these particular molds at the Dollar Spot at Target because I knew that they would be good for nothing else besides crayon molds after this project. If you are attached to a certain mold, especially if it is silicon, DON'T USE IT for this project!


Step 4: Melt the crayons in a 200 degree oven. Ours took between 20 and 25 minutes. Some crayons never melted so I dug them out with a toothpick or just submerged them a bit deeper in the melty mass of crayons.


Step 5: Let them cool and then remove them from the mold. Don't worry if they break. You can just remelt them! And there you have brand new crayons!


I used my Cricut to make 2 1/2" hearts and then wrote "You COLOR my world!" on the front and Taylor helped to write his name on the back. Kami will be able to do all of the To and From for her class, but Taylor still needed a bit of assistance. ;) Here is the finished product!

Meal Plan Monday

It's Monday again, so that means it is time to plan the meals for the week. I need to get input from the family because I have decided I don't have to make every decision pertaining to what meals we eat! Last worked great. They each got a day to choose: Kami chose soup, Tim chose pancakes, and Taylor chose Mexican Casserole. That only left a few days for me to plan and I was a happy camper. :)

Monday: pork chops
Tuesday: Taylor's choice--lasagna
Wednesday: left overs
Thursday: Tim's choice
Friday: Kami's choice
Saturday: MYO pizza
Sunday: out for small group
Monday: ham and mac-n-cheese

I have started the laundry for today. Seems as if there are not as many loads this week for some reason, so I think I will catch up on some towels. Doesn't that sound like fun?? LOL!

Also on the agenda for today: making heart crayons, Wii boxing and walking, and a fun trip to the dentist for all 3 of us. Woot! Ok, really, I love my dentist and everyone in his office, so it will be fine. It will be Taylor's first time to go and Kami's first time to get X-rays and a cleaning. They get to watch t.v. so it should be fine. I just worry about Bubba so say a little prayer for us today! :D

That's all for now! Have a great week!

New Project

I bought Kami the Hayley bedding from Pottery Barn Kids and obviously dropped a small fortune on it. So I'm trying to decorate the rest of her room on the cheap. I found some coordinating fabrics in a fat quarter bundle from The Ribbon Retreat so I am attempting to make a knock-off, er..., replicate the smaller of these two owls.

My friend Julie, of Sew Julie, gave me a tutorial over coffee one day. So this morning while the kids were building Eiffel Tower replicas with alphabet blocks, I decided to make a pattern and cut out my pieces. I used a Sun Harvest paper bag, in case you were wondering. LOL!

This is the back.

This is the top front.


Bottom front.

And the wings.

I have them all cut out now, but I don't have a sewing machine, so they will have to wait for another day. I was going to go to my parent's house to use my mom's machine, but there is noooooooo way I am getting out of the house today. Too cold!!!! I'll definitely post pics when I get it done, though!

Planning and a crossroad

If you like super upbeat posts that sugar coat life, you might want to wait for another day to read this blog. If you like the nitty, gritty realness of life, keep reading. This week has been a rough one. I know a couple of reasons why, in retrospect, but I am not sure this explains all of it. So this post may be a lot of rambling...you have been warned. ;)

I didn't plan for anything this week. I am a planner by nature. It is part of who I am and I even have a degree in planning, for goodness sake! For some unknown reason, I didn't plan for this week. No meal plan and no activity plan. It didn't work. Wanna know why??? That's right!! Because I am a planner! So I am getting a jump start on that for next week. Here is my meal plan:
Friday: make your own pizzas
Saturday: Pork tenderloin, Mac n cheese, roasted veggies, dessert pizza
Sunday: brown bag with small group
Monday: Kami's choice
Tuesday: Taylor's choice---Mexican casserole
Wednesday: sandwiches
Thursday: Tim's choice
Friday: Italian chicken strips
Saturday: out
Sunday: Superbowl party with small group

I am really trying to figure out where to fit exercise and Bible reading into my day. I need a set time every day to do the we things, but I just don't know when that is going to be. I think I am going to have to get up early in the morning and go to bed earlier because even though I might stay up late, my brain shuts down about 9:30. So even though I despise mornings with an unrivaled passion, to be the kind of person I want to be, I think me and early mornings are going to have to become friends.

I think something else that might help make my week go smoother is getting all of Kami's clothes picked out for the entire week on laundry day. (which is Monday, btw) I think Making a daily list of everything that needs to be accomplished this next week will be helpful, too. Have I mentioned that I am a planner??

Today: dog groomed, blog, haircuts, CAbi preview party
----yes, I did put things on my list that I have already accomplished so that I could mark them off. I like to see the things that I have done for the day. ;)
Saturday: Taylor's make-up gymnastics, Take kids to Slaton, work on entering clothes for Cradles to Crayons, work on Bible class material
Sunday: Bible class, NAP, small group
Monday: laundry, bows, pick Kami up, work on reading with K, pack lunches
Tuesday: take kids to school, grocery store, drug stores, pick kids up, take K to dance, intro class
Wednesday: finish up laundry, Taylor to gymnastics, make Mexican casserole for Thursday, pick up K, get ready for dance, take K to dance, get kids bathed and fed, Bible class, pack lunches
Thursday: take kids to school, meet friends, meet with small business association people, pick up kids, counseling class
Friday: enter clothes for c2c, bows
Saturday: CHILL OUT, tidy the house for superbowl party

So the planning issue is one of the problems of the week, but not the only one, for sure. I have come to a major crossroad in my life and I am very confused and not just a little scared about what to do next. I started sitting in on classes at TTU this semester and that takes me away from home on Tuesday and Thursday nights. As I was sitting in class last night, I had the "What am I doing here?" thought. I almost just got up in the middle of class and left, but that would have been very rude to the professor who is a friend of mine, and I probably would never have gone back if I did leave. I wasn't quite ready to burn that bridge. But I'm not sure I am ready to cross it, either. I'm not worried about the work load. It will be a lot, I know, but it will be nice to be stretching my mind again. But being away from my kids for at least two, if not three, nights extra every week is a very high price to pay. I also feel very, very out of place in college. When I was getting my undergrad degree, I decided to go down the counseling path instead of the planning path because I really had no desire to work with people who had a lot of money and just didn't know what to do with it. I wanted to work with people like my parents, who were middle class and struggled to make every penny count. I wanted to make life better for people who were trying to figure out how to send their kids to college and still save for retirement and still take a vacation once a year. It wasn't a popular path, especially with some of the faculty, but I had a good, strong group of friends who went down this path with me. So now, starting back in grad school, I am going back to become a professional financial counselor. I don't fit in anywhere. I will only be taking 12 hours out of each of the three areas of study I have chosen for my interdisciplinary masters, so that really doesn't give me time to get to know anyone very well. I was not prepared for what a lonely journey this is going to be. That brings me back to the question I had last night... What am I doing? Is this worth taking two and a half years away from my kids? Can I make it through this time at without a core group of school friends?

Then if I choose not to go to grad school, how will that make me feel about myself and about my kids? There isn't going to be a better to time to go back to school. My kids have lots of activities, but I know it isn't going to slow down until they are both grown and out of the house. It is just going to get worse. But if I don't go, will I have regrets? I really do love financial counseling. I love helping people pull themselves up from their bootstraps and make great decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. But is it worth helping other people at the expense of my kids? Will I resent my kids if I don't go?

I am bawling right now because this has been boiling underneath the surface for a couple of weeks and a here it is all laid out. And I still don't have an answer. I am going to have to give up something really big with either decision. So what am I supposed to do???? Which of these paths do I take? How do I find peace with my decision? I thought once I made the decision to apply to school and once I got in, everything would be peachy keen. So I applied and I got in and it isn't peachy keen. I just don't know what to do. And I don't know how to make this decision.

Tim, as great as he is, doesn't get it. He told me last night that he thinks I am just trying to talk myself out of going to school. That isn't it. It just isn't that simple. Maybe it's a gender difference thing. I don't know. It seems I don't know about a lot of things right now.

Where do I go from here? I just keep going, I guess. I have no idea what decision I will make. The planner in me is not happy about that. I'm scared to make the wrong decision. I am scared to not make a decision. But God doesn't want me to live life like a scaredy cat, so I will make decision. I just don't know how or when.

A week? Really?

I really can't believe that it has been a week since I blogged. I have been super busy so I figured I must have blogged somewhere in that craziness, but, alas, I did not. I know you have been glued to your seats just waiting for my next brilliant post, so here it is! You can breathe now! ;)

First of all, Lara Hunt, if you are reading this, I hope it is from the hospital. I pray for you a quick and painless delivery. :D Love you, girly!!

So last week was wild and crazy, but very excellent. I did all the things I listed plus I got to help Anjelica start planning her wedding. Tim is going to be a groomsman and Kami is going to be the flower girl. They asked if Taylor might want to be the ring bearer, but that ain't happenin'! That kid has some major stage fright issues!! Plus he doesn't like people he doesn't know staring at him. Kami, on the other hand, LOVES the spotlight. She will get to wear a pretty dress, get her hair, nails and make-up done (tastefully, of course), and have the attention of the entire guest list. It will be her own little slice of heaven!

Today has already NOT gone as planned, but that is life, right? Taylor is at home sick today so I am feeling the pressure to get all my running around done. I think I will call my mom and see if she can come watch him so I can get to CVS, Walgreens, United, Wal-Mart, Red & Black College Bookstore, and there is another store that I can not remember. I remember that I really needed to go there, but can't remember why! UGH! Hopefully it will come to me soon. Anyway, you can see why I don't want to drag a 3 year old around town with me, right? Especially a sick 3 year old!

Even though my schedule changed this morning (I didn't take Kami and Taylor to school and go run errands), I am still a mom and a wife and there are always things to do. Lots and lots and lots of laundry to do. Plus, last night I got really irritated with Kami. I was pulling clothes out of her drawers for approval for school today. She complained about ev.ery.thing. She is going to make me completely nutty!!! So I overreacted just a bit (shocking, I know) and took all the clothes out of her drawers and put them on the couch. Now I am going to go through all those clothes and sort out which ones she will wear and which ones she won't. I'm guessing there will be about 1/2 the clothes in her drawers from now on. And if she doesn't like that she only has 3 shirts and 2 pairs of leggings to choose from every day, then perhaps she will stop complaining about all her other clothes. Then again, I may end up doing her laundry 3 times a week because she only wants to wear those 3 shirts and 2 pairs of leggings!

My meal plan is a bit late this week, but here it is at any rate:
Tuesday: veggie soup from the freezer, bread
Wednesday: Sonic (busy, busy, busy night!!)
Thursday: lasagna, salad
Friday: pork chops, roasted veggies
Saturday: Italian chicken

So I'm off to tackle the mountains of laundry in my living room floor. Have a great rest of the week!