Unemployed?!

I had to take Alexis to a different dentist the other week for a consult. I got there and filled out the paperwork and passed it back to the receptionist. She filled in a couple of spots for herself and then she asked what my job was. I said I was a stay at home mom, and then she says "Oh, so you are unemployed" as she checks the appropriate box.

Does it ever bother anyone else that because we have the opportunity to stay home and raise our children, we should be labeled unemployed? Granted, I do not earn any cash for the work that I do at home. I am willing to bet that I work just as hard or harder, however!

When asked to describe our responsibilities at work we can include maid, cook, chauffeur, tutor, nurse, story teller, playmate, therapist, referee, the list goes on. Perhaps I should start filling those in!

I know it is silly to let it bother me, but there you have it. I choose to have motherhood be my career and I appreciate when applications or other paperwork are willing to acknowledge this!

I will climb down off my soapbox now...

Happy Birthday, Lily!

Today is my little Lily's 5th birthday! Lily Elizabeth was born in Sacramento, CA at 1:32 p.m., weighing 7 lb. 3 oz. and was 19 inches long. She has grown so much since then! I am so thankful she is mine!

5 things I love about Lily on her 5th birthday:
1. She is in love with make up, nail polish, and jewelry (and has been this way since she was about 1)!
2. She loves music and dancing.
3. Lily loves all animals and truly believes any ladybug we catch would make a perfect pet and should stay with us forever.
4. She is a great sister, especially to Evelyn. She will play with her and tell her stories. They already have a great little bond.
5. Lily LOVES M&M's. When she was littler, you could get her to do just about anything for a handful of her favorite candies.

Lily is excited to celebrate with a few friends tonight, but really looks forward to her Ladybug Garden Party next Saturday!

A glimpse of Lily as she has celebrated her birthdays...

Discovery Kingdom

We bought season passes to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and took our first trip on Monday. The kids were so excited and had a hard time being patient for the 25 minute drive there!

Knowing we would be back many times this year, we took it nice and easy and only stayed about 4 hours. The kids had lots of fun playing around in the kids areas. Alexis and Lily found it great that they could go together on rides without mom and dad since Alexis is tall enough. David and Joe particularly liked the jump house with the balls you could shoot (I wonder why).

The only disappointment was that Evie can't even go on the kid rides until she can walk. Of course, at the rate she is going, that could be sooner than we think! She is quite the little mover.

Everyone came home tired and woke up today asking if we were going back today! We look forward to lots of fun there this summer. We also look forward to venturing out of the kiddie area and into the roller coaster rides and some of the animal shows. All in good time, however!

Happy Easter!

Our Easter Sunday was fun! Of course we had a nice day at church. It was nice to have Grandma Jane with us for the day. Juliann and her kids (Dad was out of town) came over and all the kids had fun playing together. We ate far too much yummy food! Our good friends Dave and Susan came over for dessert with two of their girls. We had a fun day of visiting and over eating!

Our attempt at Easter pictures was somewhat ridiculous. No one was in the mood to sit and behave, except for Evie who thought the whole thing was great fun. We will have to try for photos in our Easter duds another day!

Our latest project

We finally decided to fix up our fireplace area since it is (in my opinion) an eyesore and just a bit of a useless area. We found a really great guy who did a fantastic job, and we are really pleased. Joe loved having the work done because he loved to sit and chat with Gary. He would just say "hey, Gary" and then ramble off a bunch of stuff. Of course Gary doesn't quite understand everything Joe says so I had to translate occasionally, but it was fun to watch Joe enjoy it so much. When we came home this afternoon and Gary was gone, Joe walked around looking for him and was bummed the he was nowhere to be found!

We don't have the TV back up yet or anything on the new mantel because we just have to wait for the finishing touches to dry 24 hours, but here are a few photos of the transformation. Once all the dust settles and everything gets put in place, we will add a completed project photo! Of course our other problem is that there is nice, new paint only on the part that Gary had worked on. So we have another painting project to start one day. It can't stay this way too long, it looks pretty goofy in that regard!

For David

David has been watching me blog and put up photos about the kids and I keep telling him that if he wants a turn as my focus, he needs to give me something to blog about!

We were at my parent's house for Christmas and David had a fantastic time building with Uncle Scott's K'nex collection. He was even more glad when he got his own set under the tree! He has had fun building with them, but kind of set them aside once he got home and back into school and playing outside.

I guess David was ready to be the center of a blog because the other night he found this little race car he had made and had me take his photo. He keeps reminding me to put it up! I am also including a photo of the ferris wheel he made at Christmas that he was rather proud of. He is working on a merry-go-round still, but it is a bit overwhelming and makes your fingers sore. We will definitely post that one when it is done!

And yes, I know he needs a haircut!

My husband, my hero!

If you know our family at all, you probably know that we do not consider ourselves handy folk. Sure, we can manage the basics, but beyond that there tends to be little hope! That is why this story might impress you!

First of all, I learned a valuable lesson: if you have dishes to do Saturday evening and decide to just rinse them and leave them for the morning, it is probably not the best idea. Alexis and I made cookies Saturday night, which was of course fun and yummy. But once I got everyone to sleep, I was just worn out and ready to not do much, so I decided to leave the dishes in the sink to do the next day.

We were all ready for church on Sunday morning and I knew we would be making more of a dishes mess with dinner, so I thought that I would just really quick take care of what was in the sink. Everything was clean and taken care of and I decided to run the garbage disposal. I hear beautiful mixing of the blades, then chunk, chunk, stop. Funny, I think. I didn't see anything left in the sink. I wonder what is wrong?

I had used my lovely Bosch mixer to make the cookies. It has a handy little piece that the beaters attach onto and then that hooks onto the bowl. Apparently the piece that holds the beaters had slid into the disposal and when I turned it on, it just literally sucked in into the hole and jammed it up against the blades of the disposal! It was jammed--it wouldn't budge. There was no getting it out.

I was sure that we'd have to get a new disposal and a new piece for my mixer, but pricey, I am sure. Anyway, to finish the story....Sunday evening Ez takes a stab at fixing my kitchen disaster. He managed to get the disposal off without ooze going everywhere. He figured out how to remove my mixer piece, and also how to put it all back together! And the best part of it? Neither the disposal or the mixer piece need replacement. Apparently they are both rather tough in and of themselves!

The morals of this story:
1. Don't go to bed with dirty dishes in your sink! (Which I know, just occassionally don't follow)
2. Even the fix-it challenged types can surprise you with what they can do!

Fun with Zoob

So Joe really loves this toy we got the kids for Christmas called Zoob. They are fun little connector pieces that when put together in fun ways, makes fun little creations! We pulled them out on Sunday and tried to follow the instructions to make some fun stuff. We managed a scorpion (which he kept breaking) and a little chicken (which I thought was cool, but Joe disagreed). It was fun!

Evelyn's little scheme

I believe Evelyn has a bit of an evil scheme going on. She is a little lady who loves to bathe, and I believe she does not think she gets to frequent the tub as often as she feels necessary. Her solution?

Messy, messy diapers! That's right, I am talking about poop! Might be a bit of a yucky converstion piece, but I'm a mom. We talk about our kids and their poop. It's what we do.

This morning I could hear Evie waking up in her room and as I walked down the hall to get her, I could sense there would be a need to hop in the tub! Boy, can babies be stinky, and man can they make quite a mess!

It's a good thing we find them so cute and loveable!

Our work in progress

One thing about moving into an older home is that you have to kind of redo what you don't like about it. It takes money and time, both of which take a bit to save up in order to get things done! We have been working on our yard bit by bit since we moved in about a year and a half ago.

The first thing we did was put a fence around the pool--obvious reasons. Then we ripped up the terrible tile patio and laid a larger one, plus widened the drive way in the front. Then we did another patio pour, redoing the dog run area and widening the cement on the side of the house. So now the dog is happy, we are happy, and the kids have a better place to play when they go outside.

We still have a few projects we have been wanting to get done. We need to redo some of our fences. One is the original one that came with the house, so it is a 20 year old piece of fence that looks so pathetic it barely qualifies as a fence. We also want to tear down our sorry looking cypress trees in front of that fence and then finally get new sprinklers and resod. Lots of projects, it will take some time!
The exciting thing? We got rid of all 17 cypress trees today! Now we can tackle that sorry fence. It was fun to watch, and now the back yard is a bit brighter and more open.

Before:



And after! Note the white trash fence...

My mom would be proud?! Maybe...

Any mom can relate to what I have to say--life is really busy! With a baby and a 2 1/2 year old constantly at my feet, and a 4 1/2 year old not far away either, there are many times I look at my day on my way to pick up Alexis and David at school and wonder what I actually accomplished. Or as I lay in bed at night (which is always at an hour that is far too late, but that is a whole other issue!), I realize that if I was being paid for the job I do as a housekeeper, I would probably have been fired FOREVER ago!

There's nothing like a little job security! With that said, this is what I am grateful for in my house:

1. Doors that close, so we can push messes in and hide them when necessary.

2. Space on top of the washer and dryer to lay(sometimes pile) all my dry laundry until it I finally fold it. I can create a pretty good laundry wall!

3. Blinds on windows so no one can peek in when I don't want them to, and no one can peek out to the back yard to the messes we are still getting to.

4. A garage that is eventually going to be a play room of sorts, but it is still not done, so I can toss in things I don't want to deal with at the time and can claim the garage can be a mess because it is still a work in progress.

5. Dark tile! I know my mom says light is better, but not in my house! Dark tile hides footprints, paw prints, all those lovely kid and pet things. And why mop right before company comes over anyway? I will just have to do it again once they leave....

These are just a few of my excuses for the messes that at times go untouched while I instead unwind from a long day by playing on the computer(like right now) or just sitting mindlessly on the couch!

But then there are those times, during the middle of the day when I am trying to accomplish something and just not getting anywhere, or just don't feel like doing it. Do you want to know what keeps me moving at those times? My mother. She is such a clean, organized person. I am sure there were messes in my house growing up, but I really don't remember them. Things were always tidy and taken care of. As I think of her, I have this terrible sense of guilt--what would my mother say if she came over right now? By the way, that would be impossible because she lives 2 states away! But what if she did? UGH! I would die of embarrassment! I have in my mind that she would think--gee, Keri, didn't I teach you better than this? Didn't I always teach you that if you just put something away when you are finished with it, you won't have to clean it up later? If you take your folded laundry to your room and put it where it belongs, then you wouldn't have to refold it once it gets knocked over on the floor!Wouldn't it be easier to take a few minutes now to do the little things so they don't all pile up and become one big chore?

Yes, mom, you taught me well. I try to follow what you taught! I hope that as my children grow up my voice will pop into their head and guilt them into doing what they know they should! That's what moms do! I am glad my mom is still an influence in my life! Love you mom! Just don't come visit without warning...