52 weeks challenge

I am starting to love Sundays again :)

Thankful for time :)

Got a few LOs done this weekend and hopefully some more still!

Why I feel Sheepish!

It's been a great week. A week that I needed. I"ve had a lot of time to think through my thoughts on things going on in my life. I think last week was a breaking point in my mind. I had had a hard day in particular and needed a way out. So my last post was a nice venting session. And I am astounded by the response!
I am grateful for all of you who took time to leave a comment. THey gave me a slap in the face back to reality. I had a serious pity party and i'm kind of embarrassed! I mean I meant what I said at the time but my mind was focusing on the wrong things.
Here's what I found:

#1: I do need to realize that "blogging" is mainly used to communicate to family and friends who live far away. They want to see pictures and things that are going on with you and your family. I don't see anyting wrong with writing funny or "are you serious" stories to help depict how life is going. ANd I knew that but I think I was just desperate to find ANY type of outlet for my feelings. So next time, I think i'll just grab a pen and paper for that :)

#2: Need to remember that my life really isn't THAT bad. I have been blessed my whole life and I continue to receive blessings my Heavenly Father. Another reason I feel embarrased from my last post is it shows my ingratitude to Him and all he has given me and my family! I should never take that for granted!

#3: I need to remember that everyone has problems in their lives, big or small. Of course, they aren't going to throw it out there for all the world to read it. I just to remind myself always that everyone goes hard times or feels inadequate in this life. So althought they don't write about them, doesn't mean hard times don't happen to them. So I shouldn't assume that everyone has a great life except me!

#4: I realized that people do care. When life gets hard, it's the friends i've made that help me up. And I appreciate the kind words and support that you've written. I have a problem with becoming independant. It first starts from not wanting to be a burden on other people so I cope with things by myself. From that, people probably assume I don't need any help and that everything is just fine with me. But I don't allow people in and help me. I need to work on that.

I just find it appropriete that this experience happened this week. The Lord has been merciful and generous to me more than words can say.

The root of all evil

I have been doing an experiment.
Trying to not be on the computer.

I actually got laundry done, cleaned & vacuumed my home. And that was all this morning...

Where am I at now?
Back to where I was before this morning, messy house, a new pile of dirty clothes, dirty dishes.

What is the point sometimes...?

At least I can say i'm trying right?

And can I say that I really loathe blogging. I'm becoming more and more bitter. I"m jealous of my sister Katie because I love how she writes her blog. It's like a window to her inner part of her soul, like a journal and that to me, is so much more interesting. And deep down, that's how I want to write on my blog. Yet i've become uncomfortable writing how I feel about things or to just vent about life here in SA. I just can't do that with the audience that my blog has. No one is perfect, especially me. I don't want other imperfect eyes reading and judging me and my life and thoughts and feelings.

Another thing I detest about blogging is reading other people's blogs. It's not reality. Most of them do not portray reality, just the fun times or when life is great. No one wants to show to the world that life may be...hard! So I read these perfect lives and it makes me feel more insecure and depressed than I already am! Is everyone else's lives really that much better than mine? Am I just the scum of the earth these days?
I"m half tempted to go totally private (again) and only invite family and few friends that I feel comfortable expressing my feelings...
a little extreme? Maybe...
Time of the month? Possibly...

Sadly, sometimes I just want to move to where we'll be going next year...which is another "so now what" issue we are having...and that's a whole other post. This year has been good but it's been hard. Friends I thought I had aren't friends, or they have their own so i'm left alone still. It's just been a lonely-hard kind of hard...and some days, I have my pity parties...seems like i'm having one today. But it's jsut been building up. This isn't something that just came all of the sudden. It's been going on for a while. *sigh* I apologize to those of you who think, "man, seriously, suck it up!" lol well don't worry, have been for a couple of years now!
Geez, see what I mean about blogs! They are just no good.

So now what...

We're in the "so now what" stage in our family. First off, I started putting Emma in "panties" whenever we were home. Yes, the first day or so were rough. She didn't "get" going in the potty to stay dry. I kind of just went with the flow, not pressuring her since I couldn't go completely diaperless when I still had to go to church and run errands in the day. On Saturday, we got her the Dora potty, which she was super excited about. Sunday, after church, we just let her run around in panties with some incidents. But that night, finishing up dinner, she ran up and was like, PEE PEE!! She had peed in the potty! I was estatic, made a big deal, did the whole thing and then gave her a handful of skittles ( I had to make an impact!) and then as she was eating her potty candy, we hear this "ssss". Look over at Emma and she had peed like NIagra Falls through her panties onto the floor...it was the thickest, biggest puddle ever! JOe started laughing. Prior to this, he had commented on the amount of skittles and I confidently said, oh it will help her realize what a great reward she'll get if she pees in the potty! Um then again, maybe not...
But come MOnday, I moved the Dora potty into the living room so she had it close. She didn't have one accident! Tuesday, she didn't have any as well and she went POOP too. It was amazing. I am completely shocked at her. I knew she was smart enough but of course, she was just not ready! So today, we bought some pull-ups so she'll be officially done with diapers. I bought some easy-to-pull-down pants & new PJ's. The PJ's because we've been containing her in onesie PJ's so she couldn't get to her diaper to experiment... But now, since she'll be needing to have access to use the potty, I needed to get some...
Which brings me to my question for all you PT mom's out there...how do you transition from having the door shut, not allowing access to allowing them access to get to the bathroom? I find it hard to just leave the door open because she'll just try to leave all night and the crack of dawn....I am just confused how to get to that point where they can walk out of their room in the morning to go pee...!?!!
I'll let you know the other "so now what" we as a family are experiencing later...

Some more...

I lvoe holiday cards! I made these for my sister for her Christmas party invitations. She chose the second. Don't worry, I redid the writing and typed in "come deck the halls" in cute font! And I love the PP in the first card!

You're probably thinking...huh i'm seeing double! Well this card is a replica of the one in a few posts back. I did it with different PP and such...but still a winner!

Holiday Cards

HOlidays are upon us!!

Cards are pretty fun to make.

Not seeing the fruit

As much as i've tried to simplify my life, it never stems any easier. If anything, it just seems to get busier and harder! And i've come to the realization that I'll probably be just a "once a week" blogger, and i'm okay with that. Honestly, I got too much involved in this whole blogging phenomenon that I started slipping in other areas in my life, like the most important things: wife & mom.
I will confess that I have a discipline problem. I have a lack of self control with things that I wan to do. LIke be on the computer all night? sounds good to me. Go to bed NOT early? check. Wait to clean the kitchen tomorrow? done! Thoughts & decisions like these run through my head all day. I have to continually fight my "natural man" to be an organized, coherent, respectable and decent human being. It's hard! ANd I go through phases where I am slacking big time and then I manage to stay ontop of things and my house actually looks livable. And I have noticed i'm not the only one who feels this way about blogging and internet use. I've started reading other people's blogs about the same stuggle that I have. The whole idea of blogging is a great one. I really like that I can print it all out or put them in books for documentation. But with all things, the adversary takes something good and twists it, contaminates and very slowly, sucks us all into it more than we anticipated. Like I said, I was like the #1 fan of the blog. I would recruit everyone I knew to get one. But it began to be a tool for Satan to draw me away from being a mom and a wife. And he knew my lack of self discipline so he used that against me!
But because of this fault of mine, sometimes it's just easier to just stop all together, so the teomptation isn't even a threat to me. But I have a hard time letting go of blogging because it is doing my posterity a favor and connecting family and friends at the same time! Could life get any better?! (lol Brian Reagan...anyone?)
So here's what we've/I've been up to these past few weeks, picture time!
I helped out with some food for a "Bug" shower for my friend Stephanie last week.. I got this idea from good ol' Martha. Fun huh? Little rice krispie lady bugs and caterpillers. Even Emma helped me out:

Here's a few pictures of the shower. LInsay did a great job in supplying bugs to put all over the house.

Jan made these yummy cute butterfly fruit cups, so cute!

Yummy food table.

Last Saturday, we went to Sea World because we needed to get more out of our season passes and Emma's been talking about wanting to see the dolphins all week. So that was fun and the weather was great. We were going to hit the Log Ride but it was having some difficulties and wouldn't be fixed for like 45 minutes so we ended up just leaving after that. But it was still fun.

Kate had a different reaction to the dolphins...

I"ve been also busy with my calling in my church. I am the Visiting Teaching Coordinator and once a year, I am pretty much in charge of a VT workshop, where we instruct and motivate visiting teachers to "get to work" :) I found a theme online called, "Overcoming Roadblock to Visiting Teaching." So we did a construction theme and I had a lot of fun planning and decorating this! ANd I had sisters bring any cars/ trucks to help decorate the place. It turned out really cool.

I made these signs by the entraces in the church :)

Another sign so sisters wouldn't go through this door..

Sister's mingling & eating

We had a door prize too.

The food!

Got this idea from online too. Thought it was cute to have the salsa in the dump truck

If you can see the little cones as the center pieces, I actually made those. I found plastic megahones at the dollar store and spray painted them orange then stuck them on black paper squares. They looked like the real thing.

And our RS president hard at work, teaching us a great lesson.

So that kept me busy for the past couple of weeks! But I am glad it turned out well and that it's over so I can now breathe a bit easier!

And so it is....

8 crazy things...

Crazy 8's8 Things...

8 things I am passionate about:
1. My family
2. Church and my calling
3.Being organized
4. Exercising
5. My invitations
6. Hobbies
7. My friends
8. Documenting Life

8 words of phrases that I use the most
1. Emma!
2. No scratching!
3. Go to Time out
4. Kate, no no
5. Let's go to the potty!
6. Hey Joe...
7. Oh Geez
8. Um...ya...

8 things I want to do before I die
1. Go on a long cruise with just Joe
2. Have peace of mind
3. Get done all the things I plan on doing some day...
4. Get a Hot Bod ;)
5. Own a home
6. Go paint-balling (like the kind in "10 things I hate about you")
7. Own an awesome, huge craft room
8. Go on a mission with Joe

8 things I need right now
1. More time
2. a Break
3. a clean house!
4. a reality check
5. sleep
6. Money would be nice!
7. To know where we're going next year!
8. a date with Joe

8 places I want to visit
1. New Zealand...LOTR!
2. Greece
3. Hawaii
4. Forks...wha wha
5. Roswell, NM
6. Manchester, England
7. Central America
8. Australia

8 favorite restaurants
1. Carino's
2. Cheesecake Factory
3. Red Robin
4. Paesano's
5. Firehouse Subs
6. Casa Rio's!!!
7. Papa Johns
8. Olive Garden

8 TV shows I watch
1. The Office
2. 30Rock
3. Chuck
4. Top Chef
5. My Name is Earl
6. The REal Housewives
7. Super Nanny
8. America's Next Top Model

8th folder, 8th picture:

Um ya, I am in charge of the RS photo directory so I have a folder of pictrues of sisters lol

I tag:
Cairen, Katie, Jenny, Heather F., Courtney, Jami, Elizabeth M., Natalie P,

Walking like a pro

Kate's finally walking like a natural!

Potty Power: cast your vote

" I can do it myself,

I'm a big kid now

I can do it myself

I've got Potty Power"

How long do I have to listen to this song?!

I rented "Potty Power" from the library to get Emma pumped up about Potty training, so she can say "No more diapers for me!" (another song!)

We watch this movie too many times. I think I have them all memorized! Well that's all that I think about. I feel my window of opportunity is growing thin. So I need your help.

We are currently using a seat that goes on top of the big toilet but I think maybe it would help to get a little potty for her. So I want your vote on which one I should get:

#1 The Dora Potty Chair-This one might be a winner with Emma. She's nuts about Dora these days...selling for $10

#2 Royal Step stool potty by Fisher Price. This one is nice because as they grow, it grows with them, from a chair, to a seat on the toilet to a stool! It also plays music when they "properly" go. Selling for $10

#3 Baby Bjorn Potty. I don't know too much about this one but it's selling for $5

#4 is the Safety First Girl Potty chair. THis one i've been tempted to get at the store because it's totally girly and so cute! But it also serves as a stool too. Selling price: $10

So there you have it...which one should I get?!