Wordless Wednesday

Quote of the Day

"Whoever is happy will make others happy, too."

Mark Twain

Photo of the Day

Dreams

I had a strange dream last night. To those of you who know me, this is really nothing new, but it had a different quality to it than my normal, run of the mill, someone is trying to kill me dreams. First of all, I was in the Olympics. Which to many of you is not strange at all considering the Olympics are everywhere right now; except, I haven’t seen one second of them. Not because I don’t care, actually the Winter Olympics are my favorite; I just haven’t had the TV on at all in the past week.

I was given a pony, with a saddle that was too small, and my legs were up around my chest. For some reason, I was afraid of the pony (really strange since I grew up on a horse) and then they just sent me out into the snow without any snow clothes. I tried to fix the saddle, but my trainers kept telling me I was doing it wrong. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, or where I was supposed to go, only that I was in a competition and I had better win because all of my team mates were depending on me.

In other words, I was in a race, with the wrong equipment, no protection and no directions – sounds kind of like life and parenting in many respects. How often are we given all of the information before we are required to make life altering decisions? How often do we feel ill-equipped and afraid of the tools we are given? How often do we have other people who supposedly know better, telling us the way we are trying to fix our lives to make it easier or better is the wrong way? How often do we know where we are going? Or how often do we feel the weight of trying to take care of our families, children and everyone else who we have signed up to be in the race with?

I do know that I miss the feeling of being on my horse, running through a field. The sense of freedom. The feeling of the horse’s power underneath me. The feeling of the wind on my face. The smell of the horse and the ground being turned up by her hooves. The sense of just being. When I was riding my horse, I was in the moment. I was relaxed. I was confident. I was happy. I wasn’t striving for someone to like me, or to do it right, or to be successful, or make decisions – I just was.

Joy is my project for this year. Learning to be in the moment, to enjoy every day and every gift God has given me. Not looking to the troubles of tomorrow, but relishing every day. Along with this comes trust. Trusting in God. Learning to trust myself – not spending my time constantly second guessing. Trusting others. And trusting that joy isn’t something that can be taken away.

Before and After

I have been looking for months for new dressers for the boys. Ryan is getting so big, that his pants no longer fit in his drawers very well. But then, they decided to use Max's dresser as a ladder and broke his drawers. I have also been looking for a dresser for my front entry way to help coral the boys shoes, backpacks, papers and such.

Since I want a good quality, wood dresser, I'm trying to find dressers at garage sales or thrift stores. Thus, it has taken quite a while to find even one. Here's the first one I've found:

With the help of the boys, I sanded it down and repainted it:

We painted the insides of the drawers orange and decoupaged an old atlas for the bottoms:

Then, I painted the pulls black and decoupaged the atlas onto the fronts:

Overall, I am so pleased with how it turned out! And Max loves it!

Ryan's Birthday

Ryan turned eight last week!

Ryan opening Rock Hero...which turned out to be broken and we had to take it back to Walmart and had the absolutely worst experience with customer service ever!!! To the point that I will never shop at Walmart agian if I can help it. It took us over 2 hours in the store and even then they wanted us to go back to the same store we got it from accross town. They didn't seem to understand that the other store didn't have any more and that's why we are at this store...Walmart gives me panic attacks...Sorry for the rant!

After we got home with a non-broken Rock Hero and we figured out how to use to use it - that's when the fun began!!!

The next day, we went bowling for his party. It was a blast! Definitely a must do again!

Grandma helping Max.

And here is Shelly and their little sister.

Happy Birthday Andi

Today is my wonderfully sweet, beautiful and talented friend's birthday. She is such an amazing woman!

Here she is with her equally sweet sister-in-love helping to pack up a friends home.

I have already said that Andi is sweet and wonderful, but she is the one I call when I need a quick smile. She is also the one I call when I find out about an amazing garage sale, estate sale or rummage event. The only problem with Andi, is we have the same taste...which can create issues about who saw it first!

Last week, I found a new thrift store and found some absolutely fabulous things to bring home (not that my home needs any new things in it). One of the items was this cake stand/candy dish?

On the way home, I remembered that Target had some very small succulents for sale in the garden department and wouldn't this dish look fabulous filled with succulents? Needless to say, the car veered into the Target parking lot and the succulents left Target and immediately were nestled into their new home.

The entire time I was creating this dish, I kept thinking of my friend Andi and how much she would love this. The next morning I discovered that her birthday was coming up in three days....

School Valentines

I don't like Valentines Day. There are many reasons why it just seems like an overpriced media hype in a culture where we are really don't need to spend even more money on things we really don't need. Besides, it tends to set couple up for failure. All of this expectation, but really shouldn't we treating each other nice every month or even week?

This brings me to school Valentines. Every year it sort of sneaks up on me. I know it's coming. But, I end up at the drug store on the corner, early before school starts, and signing stupid cards that the kids will just be throwing away as soon as they get home in an effort to get whatever candy they can find, as I'm trying to drop the kids off at school.

And every year, I tell myself I will do something fun and cool for the kids for Valentines...hasn't happened yet. Mainly because I don't think the kids would appreciate it. Not my kids, they love it when I do things, but the other kids in their classes just don't get it...Which brings up a good point - do I only do nice things for people who will appreciate it, or do I do nice things for everyone?

By the way, this is what I wanted to do: hot chocolate on a stick...still going to try it out, but probably just for family and friends. It looks so amazing! And if you are looking for some gifts to give, she has an awesome blog all about gift giving...