Today is my mom’s 43’rd birthday. I took the kids over to her house early this morning, at 9, so we could eat breakfast with her and my little sister. I wonder at this point how fast she feels her life has gone? Will I wake up tomorrow and be 43 and wonder what happened? Honor is already a year and a half and he was just born! hmmm…

My poor husband is having such a rough time! I wish I could help him more. He’s so swamped now with work. It’s kind of amazing, you think “things couldn’t get worse than this” and then they do. I guess this is the time when you remember everything GOOD in your life. Sometimes it’s hard to see, but there is SO much good in our lives.

I’m getting ready to watch my friend Melissa’s kids who are approximately the same ages as my kids. If you never hear from me again, you’ll know what happened.

We traded, yesterday she watched my kids, today I’m watching hers for an hour and Friday I will watch them for four hours. Friday I’m watching my friend Tara’s kids too, so that means 3 one year olds, 1 three year old, one 2 year old and one 4 year old. Yes, I am THAT crazy.

Monday one of our employees quit, which caused a huge upset, he was a friend before he was an employee. Poor Jim, he’s had so much to stress about before all this, and now his workload has doubled. I wish I could help him more. I’m thinking about working one more half day a week, that would make it 3 half days/week. I could help free up both Jim and his business partner, so they can focus on their most important tasks.

I go back and forth about leaving my babies, but I’m going to work during nap time, so I won’t be missing much. I think for the time being, it’s just a “sacrifice” we need to make. The business is just on the verge of doing REALLY well, and I need to take the next couple of months to help it get over the “hump”.

I think the reason I struggle with leaving the kids is that I NEVER saw myself as being a working mom. I’ve always strongly advocated staying at home. I’ve definitely changed my stance to a degree; I see that I do SO much better if I get a break from my kids. I have a hard time self motivating and having to be somewhere three days a week helps so much. Some people are just so much better at being home all the time and being organized with it; it’s been kind of hard figuring out that I’m not one of those people. I’ve expected myself to be, but I’m just not.

As long as the kids seem happy and I don’t feel like I’m slacking on my job as a parent, we’ll try this. We’re just taking it a month at at time to see how it works. I want everyone in my family to be happy, even me.

Some of may internet friends have been posting links to their glasses. It’s totally making me want new ones. (Not to mention that may prescription is 4 years old!)

I like these a lot.

Nothing too terribly interesting is happening around here, I did a baby shower on Saturday. We bummed around the house yesterday – skipped church because I’m sick of Eden getting sick from the other kiddos. I’ve got the back of my Ribby Cardi done and am almost done with the left, front panel. I hate size 7 needles. It’s SO spring here. Saturday the high was 68 degrees. (Poor you, Sarah, 18 degrees!!!) I need to go buy some seed so I can plant lettuce before it gets too hot. Yep, that’s about it. Oh, and I’m craving cake out of a box. Strange.

On his way home yesterday, Jim stopped in St. George, Utah and shopped a little while at the outlet stores. He brought the kids home a couple of toys (but didn’t bring me home a pink ipod mini even though he was at the apple store in Las Vegas. For shame!) He brought Honor a xylophone and Eden a Playdoh My Little Pony. Her two favorite things all rolled into one toy. I was happy for the pony because that meant that we finally had collected enough Pony Points to send off for the free horse. Aren’t I such a NERD??? Getting excited about Pony Points, I’m a little ashamed of myself.

But the best thing about Jim coming home is that I get a new computer. This is extremely ridiculous, but at the office we had an extra brand new computer just sitting around. Jim took it with him on his trip and now that he’s back I get it. I’m really scared to use it because The Head might wack it too. But this screen is getting so bad that I can hardly see through it.

Isn’t it just the saddest thing EVAR??

Anybody who knows me knows that if you want to insult me, just tell me that I have short eyelashes. I DO have short eyelashes, but I don’t need to be TOLD about it all the time. My friend Brooke (hi Brooke!) has the longest eyelashes in the history of the world. I try not to hold it against her. And I don’t know HOW Honor ended up with loooong eyelashes, maybe he’s not really mine? Eden’s are way longer than mine too.

Anyway, my super mascara. The nice thing about being an Avon lady is that I get to try new products before they become available in the catalogue. Last week I ordered in some new mascara called False Lash Effect. I love it. Most people (including Brooke) can tell the difference. We’re talking tenths of millimeters here, but still… longer is longer. I’m impatiently waiting for the day they can do eyelash implants. But until then, I’m happy with my new mascara, I’m glad Honor hasn’t lost it (yet).

EDIT: Ok, I now realized that I already wrote about this awhile back. Oh, well, now you know how obsessed I am.

My friend Sarah had her baby boy yesterday. 8lbs 7 oz. Congratulations Kevin and Sarah!

Today is going to be a wild day. I’m so sad that I won’t be able to make it up to the hospital to see the new baby. Since Jim’s gone, I have no one to watch the kiddos while I run up there. I’ll have to wait till he comes home. boo. But today is going to be so crazy, I don’t know when I’d get to go visit anyway.

I have to be at the church at 9am. Now to most people 9am, is not a big deal. To me it is. Well, to just me, it’s not. To me with Eden and Honor it is a big deal. By 7am we have to be up. I have to throw both of them into the shower with me. It will be a huge ordeal in which I chase at least one naked kid through the house with the lotion bottle.

Then I have to try to do my hair. I’ve got to lock myself in the bathroom so somebody doesn’t get pushed onto the curling iron again. During that time, at least one, probably two children will be banging on the door. Or one will be getting into my makeup while the other spills cereal all over the kitchen floor. No, wait. The same one will get into my makeup and then go spill cereal all over the kitchen floor while the other one bangs on the door telling me about said childs cereal spilling.

After that I’ll have to do my makeup. This will take some time because first I will have to locate my make up. My eyeshadow and powder will have rolled under the bed. My new super lengthening mascara (well talk about my eyelash fetish another time) will be in the huge decorative pot in the hallway. And probably I will find my eyeliner in the bottom of the heating duct. (You think I’m joking. I’m not.)

Are you starting to see why 9am is freaking early?

Anyway, the reason why I’m going to (try my hardest to) be there at 9am is because we’re giving away free pizza to the nearby high schoolers during lunch. We’ve got to get there early to make the signs we will hold up to direct the high schoolers to the pizza.

After all this, I’ve got to do all my regular youth group stuff… planning games, etc. I’m tired just thinking about it. And also, maybe because it’s 12:44 am… I need to go to bed. Keep your fingers crossed that I don’t find myself at 8am arm deep in the heating duct, sifting through the lint gathered in the bottom, trying to find my eyeliner.

I just got this email from Joelene

(It was not intentional, that’s just how my life is, Kix everywhere.)

Jim made it to L.A. ok. I think he’s having a good time, as good as 3 days of training can be. I’m trying to talk him into making a trip to Ikea. There’s so much stuff that I’ve been drooling over that I WANT IT ALL!!!!! I do have to get a new desk though, Jim took mine to the office because it matched the desks they had down there. I think I just want something like this but with different legs.

I also want two of these arm chairs and this dining table set in the clear lacquered pine. I want two of the half rounds and one of the rectangles. Here are some cool chairs and so cheap! I also like these shelves. Oh and I’ve got to have lighting. How about these?

All of that would only be 740 bucks. Not bad huh? I heart Ikea!!!

Ok, now onto something that’s of interest to you. The scarf swap! I send out everyones packages on Saturday.

Here they are all lined up.

and here’s what I did with my squares. I made a knitting bag.

the back

and as soon as I feel it’s safe to get my sewing machine down (safe from Honor that is) to sew a liner, I’ll add these two squares to the inside as pockets.

Also, my friend Sarah is now TWO weeks over due with her second son. Keep your fingers crossed for her, she will be induced tomorrow if nothing happens beforehand. I can’t imagine how crazy she’s got to be going!

I know that this past week has been a lot of me saying how bad things are. It’s been a really awful week and I appreciate all the support I’ve received. When things get so crappy, it’s nice to know there are people out there pulling for me.

So this (I hope) will be my last, “the world is ending” post.

Honor broke my computer last night. As I type it looks like I’m looking through a broken windshield. He slammed his head into the closed top of my lap top which shattered the LCD screen. I love my mac, but you’d think they’d make their laptops with a little more fortitude. So I’m super frustrated. I feel as though I’ve tried really hard to protect my computer, it was just one of those fluke things that I couldn’t see coming. And I’m frustrated that it seems like he destroys everything.

Here’s to next week being a happy one. One in which I don’t want to lock my children in a padded room and throw away the key. Jim leaves Sunday for LA and won’t be back until Thursday. I’m trying not to worry how I’m going to survive 5 days without his help.

Yesterday was an awful day. Our teenager called to tell me that she thought she should move out of our house. When I pressed the issue, I found out that her mom had signed her out of school. She dropped out of school. Since I didn’t want to have the whole conversation on the phone, I told her to come home so we could talk about it. Then I hung up and freaked out. What was I going to do? I tried to get ahold of Jim, but I knew that he had a meeting scheduled for that time of day. So I called Josh, the youth pastor at our church. He said that he’d come over and help me talk to her.

The hardest thing about teenagers is getting to the heart of what their problem is. I think she, especially, has a hard time talking to us because she’s afraid of being vulnerable. Every person in her life has abandoned her and I think she’s just tired of getting hurt. I’m not sure that’s the total reason why she dropped out of school, but I know part of it is a test of our steadfastness. Our conversation with Josh was cut short because she was very angry and insulting. I can only take so much and after a particularly mean insult, I got up and walked away. I know that she was just trying to be mean, but it did really hurt.

But it all boils down to the fact that we’re NOT going to give up on her. I think she wants us to, but we won’t. It would certainly be easier and we really considered just being done, but I don’t believe God brought her here for it to end this way. So Jim called her and had her come down to the office. He talked her into homschooling via correspondence. She also has to come work for him a few hours a day at the office.

So things ended up working out, but it’s all a matter of what she’s willing to do. We can’t force her to succeed, but we’re going to do everything but force her, to ensure that she does succeed.