Life in Mommyland

My history teacher read this to the class this morning and I thought I would pass it on

Twas the night before finals,
And all through the college,
The students were praying,
For last minute knowledge.

Most were quite sleepy,
But none touched their beds,
While visions of essays Danced in their heads.

Out in the taverns,
A few were still drinking,
And hoping that liquor
Would free up their thinking.

In my own room,
I had been pacing,
And dreading exams
I soon would be facing.

My roommate was speechless,
Her nose in her books,
And my comments to her
Drew unfriendly looks.

I drained all the coffee,
And brewed a new pot,
No longer caring
that My nerves were shot.

I stared at my notes,
But my thoughts were muddy,
My eyes went a blur,
I just couldn't study.

"Some pizza might help,"
I said with a shiver,
But each place I called
Refused to deliver.

I'd nearly concluded,
That life was too cruel,
With futures depending
On grades had in school.

When all of a sudden,
Our door opened wide,
And Patron Saint Put-It-Off,
Ambled inside.

His spirit was careless,
His manner was mellow,
All of a sudden,
He started to bellow.

"On Cliff Notes,
on Crib Notes,
On Last Years Exams.
On Wingit and Slingit,
And Last Minute Crams."

His message delivered,
He vanished from sight.
But we heard him laughing,
Outside in the night.

Your teachers have pegged you,
So just do your best.
Happy Finals to All,
And to all a Good Test.

Finals are here this week and next. I have one more exam before my actual fial in my Principles of Management class. My speech class starts giving their final speeches today and next Wednesday. My favorite final will be my History final and that becomes available Monday. Then I will be done done done until January 14th!

Spring semester is going to be scary but I'm really looking forward to it. I'm taking Biology with a lab, Religions of Mankind, Psychology, and Local State and Government. I told Stacey that I feel excited because finishing this semester will really make a dent in the hours needed towards graduation and it feels like I am truly getting closer to having a degree. It's something I can't wait to have and it's a reality for me not a wish. I'm grateful for the oppourtunity to be able to go to school. I'm working hard to make good grades and I look forward to seeing my kid watch me walk across the stage and accept my diploma.

Wish me luck on my finals!

I learned on my trip to Texas that I need a plan, I cannot stand around and wait for nothing to happen. I don't need an itinerary perse, I just need a general guideling to adhere to. There is room for change but not every.single.thing. has to be fucking changed every.single.fucking.time. I learned that there are some problems I absolutely cannot fix and I am 1000% powerless. I accept that now. I learned that people grow up, grow down, grow sideways, and sometimes grow inside out. I learned that I do not do well depending on other people or being at anyone else's mercy. I learned that sitting in the drizzling rain for 2 hours waiting can result in a cold 2 days later. I learned you never catch up on lost sleep and to stop trying. Most importantly, I learned I have to have a plan.

Joe comes home from Iraq tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. I'm going with his brother and mom to welcome him at ft. hood. We'll be leaving about 6 a.m. I've never been there before so it should be interesting. I'm so excited and I'll post pics when we come home on Sunday :)

First Course: Portobello Fries served with a roated tomato coulie (sp?)
Second Course: House Salad with blasamic vinaigrette and shallot dressing
Third Course: Tomato Basil soup
Fourth Course Beef option: New York Oscar- 10 oz cut of Black Angus Beef topped with asparagus, crabmeat and finished with a hollandaise sauce, served with baked potato and vegetables. 
Fourth Course Chicken option: Champagne Chicken-6oz chicken breast lightly browned. Served with a creamy Champagne sauce on a bed of garden vegetable rice pilaf with honey butter glazed carrots.

We tried it all  while in Eureka Springs and it was delicious! The menu is set now all we need are numbers and that is taken care of. We also decided on the bar service we would have and appetizers for the cocktail hour. Stacey made a mock up of our save the date postcards that we'll mail after the first of the year. I need to go pick up my dress from the store, it's been a week since they called to tell me it arrived. I think I'm afraid to bring it home and put it in the closet for fear that I'll be tempted to pull it out and look at it and something happen. I think it's safer at the bridal shop lol!

We're home after a long day of driving yesterday. We arrived yesterday early evening, and relaxed for the rest of the night. We had a really lovely time and it was nice to be kid free for a couple days, believe me. I love our boys but they have been pushing my buttons a lot lately and the older they get the more ornery they become.

Thanksgiving was yummy of course, we dined at the hotel's brunch service and it was very good. I had lots of Champagne and chocolate covered strawberries, lamb, prime rib, ham etc...there was so much food! Too much to choose from actually. 

We took lots of pictures and I'll post them as soon as I get them uploaded and sorted.

We went to the movies sans kids last week and watched Across The Universe. It was well written and the music wasn't butchered which was something I feared. I enjoyed it and would watch it again. We're getting ready for the Thanksgiving holiday coming up. Eli is going to Missouri to spend a couple days with hs dad who is traveling from Florida to visit him mom there. We'll be leaving early tomorrow morning to drive him to Springfield, then heading to Eureka Springs, AR to hang out until Friday morning when we go back to Missouri to pick him up and come home. Kristopher will spend the holiday with his own dad as well. It's going to be nice to have a couple days kid free, we're going to stay at The Crescent which is awesome because we've not stayed there before. We usually stay somewhere cheap and kid friendly not fancy when we travel to E.S. The Crescent is supposed to be haunted as well which makes us a little anxious but looking forward to checking out some paranormal activity.

We shall see what happens! When we come back , we'll be having our own thanksgiving dinner that Sunday with my mom and both of the boys. Speaking of my mom, she celebrated her birthday on Saturday, the big Five-Oh! We took her dinner and had a nice evening with cake. The boys helped make the cake too and did a great job. I think my mom had a nice birthday, I would like to have been able to do more for her but we have to budget our finances and did what we could.

Sunday was our two year anniversary :) We had a nice relaxing day, I cooked chicken piccata for dinner and would have made brownies for dessert but our sink backed up and my kitchen became a huge mess until the plumber came last night. It was a nice quiet anniversary. Our treat will be having a couple days away from the kids this week and staying at the crescent as well as the Thanksgiving Brnuch they serve. It's supposed to be a very big and delicious deal in E.S. so we're excited.

I'll post some pictures from our trip when we get back. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!

I know we've been planning a wedding and therefor already knew we were going to get married but she made it official and put a beautiful ring on my finger. It matches my other ring perfectly, which enables it to act as a band so I don't have to take it off either! I love my ring it's gorgeous and I feel so  fancy wearing it. It's the nicest thing I've ever owned, I feel as if I don't deserve it. I know it's silly but that part of me that grew up with nothing often tells myself things like that. Maybe it's my fear of having nothing again? I don't know. I know I am worthy of love and being loved and being treated nicely. I deserve to have something pretty but don't demand it. I'm very grateful for my life now but that small part of me keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's that little girl in me that never had a promise kept or a dream met, it's the young woman in me that took that disappointment with me through my young adulthood and the grown woman in me that fears it's all going to be taken away. 

I trust because it's all I can do, if I worry or give in to my fears then I'm jinxing myself. I also trust because Stacey hasn't given me a reason not to. She's kept every promise or word, treated me unbelievably kind, spoiled me rotten and loves me uncondtionally. I'm so blessed and I have to put it somewhere or else I'll just explode. I feel like I can't share my feelings anywhere because then I'm bragging or whatever but dammit I came from someplace really dark and I'm in the light finally; why can't I share my joy a little bit? I don't want to make others feel bad or if they are in a worse place to remind them of that. I just want to remind myself and say it out loud where I came from and where I am now in my life emotionally and mostly recognize/acknowledge so I don't ever go back. *sigh* enough rambling lol I've got to run to the grocery..I'll post a pic of the ring too! The ones we took with the camera didn't come out very well, so I pulled a pic off the website and cropped it.

 

honestly, the picture doesn't do it justice and doesn't show the gorgeous ivory and champagne colors but here you go!








this is a close up of it on me



some details of the train

School is about to seriously kill me. I hired a private tutor to come to the house for two hours a week (at least) in hopes of helping me not drown in this crap. I'm tired, the boys are acting like fools, my head hurts, the house is a damn mess and I am flat sick of it all right now. I just want to go to bed and try again another day...Did I take my wellbutrin today, or yesterday for that matter?

I'm seriously trying to figure out how people can make money doing what they love (i.e. hobbies and such). I've worked really hard on my website and hope to someday be able to run it as a business to bring in extra income for us, but I don't see how it's going ot be possible. I want to deliver a good product and not have to charge an arm or leg for membership either you know? It's hard to think about and figure out as well. I'm learning more and more through school and changed my major to business as well, in hopes of gaining more information.

I did some research and there are some wonderful business search engines out there to ease the stress in looking for international businesses or products. I was reading about masterseek, their site looks so nice! I need to find out who does their web design and talk to them about my website as well. I am in the process of searching for some jewelry businesses (a girl can dream can't she?)to look at some pretty baubles. I noticed I can join and advertise my hopeful business as well. It's like Google but for businesses, which is awesome because you don't have to sift through a bunch of ads or links in order to find what you are needing.

Good freaking heavens my kids are expensive! Eli had his birthday party in May at Chuck E. Cheese and that cost a pretty penny, now Kristopher's birthday is coming in June and we're going to shell out another small fortune for it as well. I love my children but they are breaking my bank for sure. Kristopher hasn't made up his mind about what he wants to do for his birthday, one day it's Chuck E. Cheese, the next it's the public pool, then he goes for the big guns and wants Incredible Pizza! Yikes! Thankfully I signed up at Bloggerwave to make some extra cash with my blogging. Every bit helps and if I blog enough I can earn plenty enough to help offset the cost of the birthday party.

First of all thank God it's the last week of school and thank GOD thi is a four day weekend. I am exhausted and so is Stacey. But most importantly, thank God the kids are at the grandparents tonight! Woohoo! I wish I could say that we've done nothing but relax and veg out all day, but nope. We've been battling the fleas, our dogs are killing us and themselves with the fleas. So we had to fog the house, and then clean up the mess, wash the dogs, and spray the dang yard too. It's been busy as hell and I'm tired. We did get some potentially good news, the grandparents might keep the kids for one more night. THEN we wont do anything but veg LOL!

Kristopher is walking for Juvenile Diabetes on June 2nd and if you could will ya click the link and donate a few bucks in his name? He hasn't had anybody donate on his page yet :( Thanks y'all!

http://walk.jdrf.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=extranet.personalpage&confirmid=86681355

Woohoo! Tonight is the school's Mayfest. I have no idea what to expect or look forward to but they suckered me out of $20 worth of tickets for it. The boys have been looking forward to this all week long and talked of nothing but this and Star wars (of course) all week long. I"ll come along and post how I survived later this evening.

Here's a pic from our game last week. As you can see I have a ham on my hands. The child can never just stand still, smile or look at the camera, it's either one of those things or none of those things. Lord knows I love him but I can't get a nice picture of him or his brother to save my life. People think I am crazy for wanting another one, but I do and if it makes me nuts then so be it. Maybe I will get lucky and have a girl next time!

Wow! I have joined the rank of ranks. Within one month I have crossed two major thresholds of mommyland; Soccer mom and PTA volunteer. Oh yes, it's happened to me of all people and I find it strangely fulfilling, exciting and *gasp* fun. No really, I get to sort of be a boss (which I like) but without all the serious responsibility, I get to organize and plan and what I don't want to do I enlist other parents for. It's an ace plan.

My goal right now is to find a way to get a sponsor for our school because we need $15,000 in order to have all day kindergarten next year. Now, I have a pre-k kid right now so next year is Kindergarten for him so I can't tell you how important it is that both of those boys be in school all day. It is essential for my sanity (and yours too actually). So yes, my motives are purely selfish, but there is a huge benefit to all if we can get it accomplished.

Soccer practice rained out today, game tomorrow at noon! So far out little team has clobbered the competition and let's hope tomorrow is no different. I'd end this with some sort of cool "gooooooooo *insert team name here* but we don't have a team name yet, we're the kids in the purple shirts.

This is what my boys look like most of the time. It seems that on the weekends I only know them by the backs of their head since they are glued to the XBox or the computer. W don't allow the XBox to be played during the week so when the weekend comes those boys are in full throttle to race to that machine and get lost in a world of Lego Knights Kingdom, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Cars or their newest obsession Disney Extreme Skateboarding. Lord I love my children and am impressed with their video game genius but good grief they would live in front of that thing if we let them. That's why we let them go crazy with it on the weekends. Of course, every.single.damned.day. Eli asks "'is today a weekend?" He's like a junkie looking for a fix sometimes! Kristopher is no better let me tell you! Their hearts are in the right place I suppose and we do make sure they get plenty of exercise, fresh air and fun outside of the home to make up for their glazed over eyes when the video games are on. They play soccer, basketball and tee ball so I don't think we are warping them too much right?

Take your hand out of the toilet bowl, no don't lick it after!!!
That doesn't belong in your nose
No, I do not pee from my butt
No, you do not pee from your butt
I said that doesn't belong in your nose
Don't eat food you've dropped on the floor
Stop feeding the dog your dinner
We have to go to the ER and have that removed from your nose