Funny Things

My kids can provide so much humor into my life. This always makes life so great because when you least expect it they will say or do something that just brings huge smiles and laughter into our home.

Luke & Me
Luke comes into our bathroom to potty while I am getting ready for church yesterday morning. He sits down and I instantly thank him for smelling up my bathroom as I am trying to get ready.
Luke: "Well I am not as bad as daddy. Daddy is a "P-U" and I am just a "P". "
Me: I just laugh at his logic and tell him he is such a silly kid.

Dinner Time
We all sit down to eat dinner.
Thomas (my 2 year old) holds out his hand and say's "give me five mommy".
Me: Hold out my hand and give him five.
Thomas: Holds up a fist and says "give me nickles" (knuckles).
Me: Hold out my hand and he gives me knuckles.
Thomas: Holds up his finger and says "touch my finger"
Me: Touch his finger and he says "SSSSS".

No clue who tought him this but it had us all laughing.

I have so many of these moments all the time and I am always forgetting them because I don't write them down. Since both of these happened yesterday they are fresh in my mind. What have you kids done lately that brought about a good laugh?

A HARD CHOICE

This year my husbands company went to a new type of medical insurance. The idea is for a healthy person or family to pay a lot less in monthly insurance fees but insurance doesn’t cover anything until you meet a $4500 deductible as a family. Looking at our insurance history we will never hit this because it is rare we go to the doctors (kids more than anyone). On a side note, all wellness type doctors’ visits fit into a different category and are 100% free. Basically the idea here is we have insurance but it is designed more for something tragic where medical expenses would exceed our $4500 deductible. Seems reasonable but makes me nervous about going to the doctor at all because one trip depending on what is done can take a hit on our budget.

I have been recently struggling with something personal. Last month I found a lump on my breast. I did not like what I found and luckily it was time for my annual “ladies” checkup. This made me happy because having this checked out by the doctor will not cost me a trip to the doctors as this fits into that free category. The doctor feels what I feel and tells me it is probably nothing, probably a hormonal change; however she gives me a script to have an ultrasound and tells me to wait until after my next menstrual cycle to decide rather I still want to have the ultrasound. Basically the doctor has put the decision back on me. I believe she did this because the day I found the lump it was huge, I am not a checker (will be from now on) and still found it because it was so noticeable. About 5 days later I saw the doctor and it was about half the size that it was. She said odds are it will fade away. Her thought was if it is still their then come in but other wise don’t worry about it.

My monthly cycle has come and gone and the lump is still their but barely. For the most part it has faded away as she predicted. Now I am struggling, do I go have it checked out further and spend $600 plus dollars on an ultra-sound to probably find out it is nothing or do I let it go?

I have considered letting it go and just keeping a close watch on things and if it returns like it did, having it checked out further. My friend told me it is more than likely nothing and odds are that is exactly the case. However, I have never had anything like this and find it a bit stressful. The other stressful part is I have young children and I would hate to ignore something and later discover I made a bad choice.

The most interesting part for me is just in the past week I have run across all types of things involving breast cancer. Talk about ironic! TV shows and not just one but a few, someone I work with telling me about a friend of hers who died because of breast cancer and left young kids behind, and the other day I am in the grocery store and I almost walk smack into this lady with no hair at all so you know she has gone through some type of cancer treatment.

Do I take these as signs or am I just all of a sudden noticing these things that I probably never gave a second thought to before? I really am struggling here because I just know if I go spend that $600 it will be for nothing more than my peace of mind. Then I will be mad at myself for wasting $600, remember I am really cheap and spending money is a real struggle for me. Eric very much wants me to have it checked out because he says the peace of mind is worth the money.

I know you all don’t have the answers for me, I just needed another outlet to speak to. I have only told my husband and my best friend. My husband says get it checked, my friend says don’t worry about it and I am standing on both sides not sure what to do. I considered talking to my mom about it but she has had such a hard year, I don’t want to make her worry.

Funny thing is if we were on our old insurance I wouldn’t think twice about this and I would just go get it done. I new I wasn’t going to like this new insurance plan.

Aquarium

So often we find ourselves so caught up in our everyday lives that we don't stop and take the time to go do something fun. I know my husband and I are both really bad about putting so many other things (especially working on the house) over anything else.

Last Saturday we decided to take the kids to the Aquarium. It was the first time in a while where the weather was really nice and it was just a great day to get out and go do something.

While I do love doing these things you must know I don't like crowded places and with little kids I stress even more with crowds. However even with the crowds, I think we all had a great time.

Here is a little bit of our fun:
They even have a big play area for the kids but it was extra crowded so we didn't stay and play. The boys did enjoy climbing on the large frogs.

Here were some living things they could touch. We were looking down at a star fish. It was pretty cool but we didn't touch it, just looked.

I love how up close and personal you can get with everything. I had smiles until the shark came and then they didn't care about the camera anymore.
Way cool to have it get this close. We were also up close with a big python snake but I didn't take any pictures of that. I must have been distracted by this really large snake right up at the glass checking out my kids.
I loved the Jelly Fish area. It is this nice dark room and the Jelly fish just glow. I couldn't use my flash and when I don't use my flash I don't get the best pictures but you can see how colorful they are.

Interestingly enough Luke remembers being stung by a Jelly fish on our vacation to Destin Florida (2 years ago). The water was full of Jelly fish on that trip and he was playing on the beach, running up and down away from the waves and still managed to get stung. They were really bad that summer.

He did still enjoy checking them out from behind the glass.

(My favorite photo from this trip, just wish I had more of Luke)

My favorite part of the aquarium are the really large tanks where you get to walk through these tunnels and you have fish above you and on both sides of you. These tanks are huge and some pretty big sea life inside.

For example you can have this big guy swimming over head.
See, see, see.... we had lots of this.
Look at the size of this turtle. Amazing!

Like I said by far my favorite part because the kids are just surrounded with lots to see.
Finally at the end they have tanks where you can touch things like small sharks. Neither boy actually touched anything but they tried.
Finally wouldn't you know it the exit is right through the gift shop. This is the face of a very upset boy because he could not have something from the gift shop.

Don't feel bad for him, he already has a couple of things from this very aquarium as it is not the first time he has gone.

They always come first.

My kids, this is who I am talking about. I put them and their needs and wants before anything else.

I decided to blog about this today because I recently noticed I have many things that are worn out, falling apart and in dyer need of replacing. But because I always put my kids first I never spend money on myself. Never! OK, not never but very rare and it usually isn’t something for my joy but something out of necessity. For example, my broken steam mop, I was lost with out it so I broke down and bought myself a new one. A mop doesn’t exactly bring the feeling of glamour to a gal.

I don’t buy new things like shoes or purses too often.

Tennis shoes…. New October 2007 thanks to my best friend Vicki who replaced the same tennis shoes that were really worn out. Funny thing, I would probably still be wearing those tennis shoes had she not bought the new ones for my birthday in 07.

My purse…. Christmas 2006 or 2007 (not sure)… bottom line is it is old and worn out. The strap is on its last leg and inside pretty worn out and yucky looking. Case in point just the other day I had a chicken nugget in it. Isn’t being a mother wonderful? Current condition of my purse is boarder-line bag lady. Seriously!

My leather gloves…. Old, at least 5 years old, maybe older… these were a Christmas gift and the fingers have holes in them. It is actually very embarrassing but they serve their purpose. Plus winter is almost over and I will make myself put them in the trash so next winter I have to buy a new pair.

My sun glasses are missing a screw but still holding on so I keep wearing them.

I don’t want you all to think I am this ratty person but I think you are getting the idea. I just don’t do for myself. I make money and spend it on the kids. They have new things out of necessity as they have out grown or wear things out. If it wasn’t for holiday’s I probably would never have new clothes, case in point all the things I listed above were all gifts.

Any time I do plan to splurge on myself something unexpected will occur and take my “mad” money away. Then when I really do have the extra money I can’t decide how I should spend it and then I struggle with spending it or I splurge it on the kids. I guess because I have so many things I would like to have I don’t know what I want/need more.

Right now I guess I am feeling worn out, literally. It seems everything I own is worn out and I could use new. I just can’t decide what is priority, necessity and/or where to even begin. It is so rare I give to myself that it isn’t easy for me to do.

My question for all of you, do you buy what you want when you want it? Do you treat yourself on occasion? Do you budget for things you want? Do you spend more on the kids than yourself?

Toys & Lego's

Our house is small and many of you have probably heard me complain from time to time about not having enough space. We have a room downstairs off the living room that is our office and our toy room. The boys share a very tiny bedroom so we don't keep toys in their room and they don't play upstairs either. This leaves sharing the office with the toys.

Often times this room makes me crazy because toys are often scattered all over the place. At Christmas time I found some shelves at IKEA that I had to have for the toy room. I recently got rid of a lot of baby toys and things that they just don't play with and came up with this wonderful set up for my toy room. If it doesn't fit here then it is time to say good bye to something.

Here is a photo of my toy room with my new shelves. Sorry, no clue why my picture is so fuzzy.

They had to pose and I just had to share the smiles of these cuties.
Now we do have the train table on the opposite side of the room and we do have baskets underneath with trains. I have a love/hate relationship with the train table. It is often torn apart and I just hate this large cumbersome table in this room. I will live with it until the day comes that my boys don't want to play trains anymore.

For Christmas Luke got a lot of Lego's. This boy will spend hours and hours building with Lego's. It is the Engineer in him, I know it. The problem is when he makes things he wants them put where his brother can not get them and take them apart. (I have broken up many fights between these two boys over Lego's)

Luke found a place for his Lego's but I am not a fan of where he has decided to put all his Lego's.
This is the top of the entertainment stand in the toy room. All my stuff has been pushed back to accommodate the mess of Lego's.
Yesterday, I cleaned off a couple shelves in the toy room and we filled them with Lego's. Now this only holds a little bit and I want the rest in the designated drawer below but he wont put them in the drawer because his brother will get them. Worst part is Thomas has a draw full of bigger Lego's that are his and he doesn't want those. He wants the cool things his brother has already made.

I still have lots of Lego's on top of my TV stand. But we did get a few of them up on the wall. Sigh!!!

I do love the creativity that Luke has. Here are a few of the things he has built and won't take apart and put away. We have many of these....

One Lego's ship/fighter of some sort. He loves Star Wars.

This one he made at Thanksgiving. Pretty good turkey if you ask me.

Finally, I think this is some type of sub or fighter ship. Not sure but still clever.

I must say the time he spends playing Lego's is worth the money we spend on them. Do your kids have something they can play with for hours on end?