Tired

It's been a long week. It's snowing again. And I am tired. I don't know what has hapeened to me. Have you ever had a week where you can't really remember anything other than that whatever happened made you exhausted?

I know a lot of my mood has to do with the weather. It's snowing here for the millionth time this winter. Everyone is stir crazy. I would love to walk outside without a coat on. Morgan has more energy than 100 people, and I have been trying to corral her for weeks. And the weather is causing my fibromyalgia to act up terribly. I can tell when we are getting another weather change based on how bad my body hurts.

I've thought of lots of things to blog about over the past week, then when I went to write it figured that I was the only one who would want to read it! Work has been slow at times, frantic at others. That pace often makes me exhausted. On the plus side, two of my friends at work are expecting their first child (each) so we are starting to talk about all things baby! How fun.

I hope that the next few weeks bring more sunshine, more energy, and a lighter mood! How about you...is the weather or work bringing you down?

A Girl and her Slinky

One Funny Guy

Today I was introduced, via Jonah's EB Auction site , to Tim Hawkins. If you don't know him, you are missing out on a very hilarious comedian! Here are two of his songs that are great! Enjoy.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day dear friends! I hope your day has been filled with those you love most. Ours has been great! My day started with roses and donuts, lovingly retrieved early this morning by my Valentine, who is making this a tradition :) We enjoyed a little quiet time together before Morgan got up and we talked to my Dad. Morgan came out to find a slew of gifts on her table from her many admirers.

Morgan got lots of good things, including two Disney movies, 10 Little Golden books, and a giant stuffed dog! I surprised Patrick with a PlayStation 3. This is what he thought of it.

My present is the TV that he is playing his game on. After we opened up gifts, I took Morgan to the pool for some fun quality time, just mom and daughter. We had a blast!

We decided instead of waiting hours in line for a table at any restaurant in Morgantown that we would just eat in. I decided to make Patrick's favorite dinner, Spicy Pepper Penne Pasta. He surprised me by saying that HE wants to make it, with my watchful supervision. How nice!

Here's the recipe. Be careful, it can cause heartburn. I don't feed it to Morgan, but I reserve a little of the penne and cook it for her with either a pesto or red sauce.

Ingredients:

1 package (16 oz) penne or tube pasta
½ tsp. minced fresh rosemary or 1/8 tsp. dried rosemary, crushed
2 packages (7 total ounces) sliced pepperoni, halved
½ cup sliced pepperoncinis*
7 oz (1 jar) roasted sweet red peppers, drained and chopped
3 ½ cups boiling water
½ cup whipping cream
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1) In a large skillet, layer the pasta, rosemary, pepperoni, pepperoncinis and red peppers (in this order).
2) Add water, bring to a boil.
3) Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 12 minutes or until pasta is tender (I simmer mine longer…about 20 minutes until there is almost no water left in the bottom of the skillet)
4) Whisk together cream and Parmesan cheese; pour over skillet mixture. Toss to coat.

*Look for pepperoncinis (pickled peppers) in the pickle and olive aisle in the grocery store.
**This dish can be pre-prepped. If you pre-slice the ingredients you can easily throw this together after work for dinner. If you don’t pre-prep, make this recipe on a weekend!

Prep Time: 30-45 minutes Bake Time: 30 minutes

They're Here!

Yesterday we came home to find this box on our doorstep:

This is a very special Duraflame box, for it did NOT contain lighter logs. Instead, it contained my Cookies for Kaz! They arrived in these simply and tastefully decorated boxes.

And inside contained a dozen delicious cookies, each individually wrapped, perfect for gift giving!

I ordered a dozen cookies for each of my family members.....peanut butter for my Valentine, sugar for my sweet princess, and white chocolate cranberry oatmeal for me. I will be taking them to work to share (since they were so nicely individually wrapped they are easy to share) so that I won't eat them all, but Morgan and I HAD to sample a few before I share.

Thanks a bunch Alaina! The cookies are absolutely divine. I hope you are able to meet your goal in time to go to Kaz.

Supporting some good causes

I don't know about you all, but lately I have been touched by the giving bug. Maybe it's the cold weather, or Valentine's Day, or I don't know what, but I've been in the mood to help out. Now, I'm not one to jump in and head up projects and I really HATE fund raising, but I am more than happy to help out some really good causes. So today I want to highlight 3 causes that I feel strongly about:


1) Morgan's daycare has been planning a Souper Bowl charity event for about a month. In fact, the event was supposed to be last Saturday (the day before the Super Bowl in case you aren't connecting the dots) but with the 26 inches of snow we got in Morgantown, the event was postponed until February 27th. The jist of the event is all of the kids got together and hand painted pottery bowls that are going up for silent auction. Tickets were sold for the event, which gave the ticket holder a pass for all you can eat soup, bread, and desserts. In addition to the bowls, there are other items that people can bid on. For this event I cross-stitched a baby blanket.



It took 75 hours over 6 weeks (I tell you this not for you to feel sorry for me, but just for reference) and I had the best time doing it! Not only does it tap into the ONE creative vein I have, but it keeps me busy in the evenings and keeps me from snacking all night long. This, and many other items will be auctioned off and 100% of the money raised will be split between our local homeless shelter and a group called Labor of Love (a house for pregnant women who have no where else to go. They can live in the house and participate in groups and activities from daily living skills, to caring for a newborn, to parent classes). The school is big into promoting a willingness to give in the kids, and as an added bonus it helps promote it in the kids' parents too :)



2) My very good bloggy friend, Alaina, has the greatest joy to be able to return to Kazakhstan, the country where they were adopted their two oldest, adorable boys. She is going with the group Two Hearts for Hope, a non-profit agency dedicated to helping the orphans in Kazakhstan. The 2 Hearts 2 Kaz Team 2010 will be going to Kazakhstan April 30-May 9. They hope to build a playground for the Children's Home, a local orphanage in Almaty City, and visit the blind children's home, and the special needs orphanage in Almaty. You can check out Alaina's story, donate to help her meet her travel goals, or order some cookies from an amazing cook to support this worthy mission.



3) A little boy who I have been following since he was born, Jonah Williams, has a rare skin disease called Epidermolysis Bullosa (or EB for short). People with this genetic disorder is characterized by the presence of extremely fragile skin and recurrent blister formation, resulting from minor mechanical friction or trauma. Little things, like a diaper with elastic in the legs cause huge, painful blisters. I'd encourage you to visit his website to see this cutie! This little guy will be one year old later this month, and his parents and their friends are hosting an online auction February 23-27. There are over 100 items to be auctioned off and all of the proceeds are going to DebRA, a non-profit organization devoted to finding a cure for EB. You can check out the link in my sidebar to his auction site and log on to get some great stuff at a great price for a great cause!

A Post of Quotes

Borrowed from my friend Catherine's blog, for parents with daughters and/or toddlers:

"One of the common ways that mothers fail their daughters is to load them down with criticism." from Femina


"Patience is not 'putting up with'." There is a difference between being patient and letting things go until things are really unbearable for everyone. "A patient mother is a faithful mother."

From K-Love's Encouraging Word of the day:

So let's stop condemning each other. Decide instead to live in such a way that you will not cause another believer to stumble and fall. ~ Romans 14:13, NLT

Some thoughts on parenting:

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while. ~Josh Billings

Your children need your presence more than your presents. ~Jesse Jackson

If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others. ~Haim Ginott

Snow pictures from Saturday

The Snow Storm of 2010 started like this...beautiful, huge fluffy flakes.

Morgan's play house. By the end of the snowfall the snow was up to/over the door.

I thought this was a funny picture of our bird feeder :)

Tree limbs nearly touching the ground.

My wonderful husband, shoveling, and shoveling, and shoveling (look how deep it is, and this was only 12 inches into 26).

Where is Ben Franklin when you need him?

**UPDATED FEB 7: We now have power after 45 hours without. Came home from family's house to see our home lit up like a Christmas tree. What a lovely sight it was.**

Today during the "Blizzard of 2010" we woke up to no power. Well, to be fair I woke up to no power at 2:30 this morning. And unfortunately it hasn't come back on since. According to the power company, we are in good company of 206,000 households with no power. And while we haven't had most of the niceities of electricity, we do have a small generator that we can use to run our furnace, refridgerator, and microwave. And folks, when you get about 2 feet of snow, the furnace becomes the ONLY thing that you really want. When we all finally got out of bed this morning it was about 55 degrees in the house!

It's really easy to take for granted normal everyday things that you have until, if only for a while, those things are gone. However, you can also find things that you have forgotten when the normal things are missing. For the first time in our life as a family of 3, we were all in the house and the TV was never on. Don't get me wrong, we are not the poster family for The Couch Potatoes, but Patrick jokingly says "We're paying for it if it's on or off, so it might as well be on". And he does mean it! Morgan's life wasn't changed much....she's one of those kids who watches TV while doing 5 other things. She just really enjoys the background noise, much like her father. Patrick and Morgan played a couple games of dominoes. I found that without the distractions of DVR and Investigation Discovery I was able to actually get our entire kitchen CLEAN. I mean reorganization of the drawers clean (and that's huge for me, trust me). We all took an afternoon nap. And Morgan and I sat down together and worked on a craft. I hardly ever sit down and work one on one with Morgan and I think we both really enjoyed the time, just the two of us.

Right now we are spending some time with our friends Josh and Anna (who graciously allowed us over because they have electricity). We had Chinese food for dinner and now all of us are watching The Aristocats, Morgan's choice but we are all quite captivated. My fortune cookie said that only good things are to come ahead, and I hope that means that when we do head home we see the porch light on! Patrick promised Morgan some time playing in the snow tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be able to upload some of the snow pictures. It is really pretty, if you can get past the no power thing :)

**Patrick said I must put a special thank you to the Robinsons for rescuing us from the death grip of the Storm of the Decade! So a hearty thank you our friends!!!**

Morgan decorates for Valentine's Day

Celebrating Birthdays

Morgan has been very interested in birthdays lately, constantly talking about her birthday and when her party will be. She has had a couple classmates have birthdays recently and she thinks that her birthday is coming soon.

In an effort to help her understand when birthdays in our family occur, especially hers, I came up with an idea that we have finally put into place. I bought a 2010 desk calendar yesterday for 49 cents (score!) because the squares are big enough to put pictures. Sadly, we missed birthdays in January (sorry folks) but I was able to start in February. I placed pictures of the person whose birthday it is in each square. We will be marking off the days of the month and when we get to a picture, we will be calling those people to wish them a happy birthday.

I was able to get February and March done (as you can see, March is a busy birthday month, and I am even missing one picture!), and will have to work on getting pictures for the rest of the year. In an effort to keep it fairly simple for her, I have chosen to only put close family and some of Morgan's friends' birthdays on the calendar. I hope that this will work to help her understand when people celebrate special days. I also hope to include days when we are going to be doing something she likes (like WVU basketball games) and holidays.

We'll see how this works not only to teach her about birthdays, but to help her learn more about the calendar, days of the week, and recognized her numbers. But if nothing else it will help her know when to celebrate (and make cupcakes, which she thinks needs to be done every birthday, and I am not arguing!).

Thinking more about "normal"

Today I have had a little time on my hands at work and have been going through folders on my computer in an effort to start "spring cleaning" here in the office. I have been thinking alot about what is normal for our family, and this post will be a continuation of the post I did just a few days ago.

While sifting through the layers of documents on my computer, I came across a letter I wrote to my precious child the day after her birth. As I was reading the letter, I was saddened to see that promises I made to her that very special day were not being honored today. I sat and looked at the things I said and realized that even though I have not been doing all the things I promised, it didn't mean I love her less or have failed her in some way. It only means that I am human, a woman trying to work full time and be a mom.

During this little exercise, however, I did realize that the "normal" in our life really didn't have to be the "normal" that we experience in the future. The frenetic life that we currently live will slow down, but we need to apply the brakes. The times we spend together can be more engaging and we need to take advantage of those times. The love we have as a family for each other needs to be expressed, daily. Normal can be changed, but it won't change if we sit by and wait for someone else to change it.

Sometimes it is OK to fall short of expectations. As a Type A personality, the quest for perfection can get overwhelming, especially when perfection can never be achieved this side of Heaven. And for as long as I have lived, I have never met SuperMom. My job is to provide for Morgan, teach her about God and the world, love her unconditionally, and remember that the only way she will learn is to experience things herself. I remember today the total love I felt for that precious newborn, and I still love her as much. I suspect I always will.