Defender of the Minivan

The intention of this blog is to defend the poor minivans in the world. As I’m sure you know minivans tend to have a bad rep among moms. I would know this because I use to be one of the typical moms that would say “I will never drive a minivan, they are such mom cars or mom mobiles, I want an SUV!” Well, then the day came when we had 3 kids and wanted a bigger vehicle. For nine months we smashed all 3 kids in the backseat of our car, we actually had to take the arms off of Josiah’s car seat and Elisha’s booster just to make it fit. Somehow we even managed to go on a road trip to Arizona with all of us in our car.

Anyways, it was really cramped so we knew we had to start thinking about a getting bigger vehicle. So of course I start researching SUV’s and after lots of research I realized that they didn’t make SUV’s in our price range. Then one day it hit me! And I have to contribute it to the wise words of my second favorite Pastor (Vince being my first) Steve Wilburn! He said, “Needing a minivan is the stage of life you’re in, enjoy it!” Then I began to wonder why didn’t I want a minivan again? Oh yeah, because that’s what mom’s drive! Wait, I am a mom! A mom of 3! When did this happen? I’m 30 and a mom of 3. It’s not like I’m a teenager driving my mom’s minivan. I am now “the mom”. I’m grown up and yes I think I qualify for a minivan. Yes maybe I look like the typical 30 year old mom driving a minivan but in my defense that is what I am! I am enjoying every second of being a mom! I cook, clean, wash laundry, change dirty diapers, get spit up on, homeschool, wipe off cute dirty faces, make cookies and drive a minivan. It’s the stage of life I’m in and I LOVE it! I love driving my minivan and looking back at 3 precious happy kids in the backseats! I also know someday when I’m older, and my kids are grown, and my minivan driving days are over I will look back and miss these days! So if you need a bigger vehicle save your money and get a minivan, I promise you will enjoy it! And don’t worry if you drive an SUV we can still be friends!

Kids are funny!

Josiah likes to fall asleep coloring. And when he is all finished coloring he sticks the crayon in his ear I guess, because this is how I always find him after he's sleeping.

Are you a napper?

Just thought I'd throw this question out there:)
Do you like taking naps? Everyday my kids take a 2-3 hour nap. Nice I know:) There are so many day's that I'm soooooo tired and would love to take a nap but it's almost not worth it to me. See I Love & Hate taking naps. Let me explain, when I take a nap I can't just rest on the couch. I have to be in my bed, and I can't just go to bed in my jeans so I have to put on my pajama's and then I can't sleep unless I've washed my face and brushed my teeth. I just won't fall asleep unless I do these things. Once I'm asleep I don't do the 10-20 minute power naps, I sleep at least 2 hours. Then when I wake up I actually feel worse then before I took a nap, even more tired. So I have to make coffee again just to wake up. It's like I'm starting my day all over for the second time. I would usually rather go all day being extremely tired then to have to go through all that just to take a nap. Then there is Vince he can sleep anywhere, anytime, with loud noises all around him or kids jumping on him. He will sleep great! So this is my dilemma for today. I stayed up way to late last night and a nap sounds so nice right now.

Anyways......I'll leave you with this picture of Josiah taking a nap on the beach last year. I think he takes after Vince.

One more picture.

This picture was taken a while ago. This is Vince taking a nap under all that stuff. Elisha gathered all this stuff from around the house and put it on Vince while he was sleeping. Then he put the couch cushion on top and jumped on him! He didn't even wake up. This was the day after a swat trip:) He was really tired!

Ben & Jerry's

All day I've been looking forward to putting the kids to bed so I can have this Ben & Jerry's ice cream. This is definitely the BEST flavor I think:) This seems to be what I turn to when Vince is gone on a trip so it's a good thing he is coming home late tonight, these calories can really add up! Plus I can't wait to see him it feels like he's been gone a month, although it's only been a week:)

The next 2 weeks.......

Thursday morning I spent the morning at the doctor's with Elisha. It never fails that every time Vince is gone on a trip I have to make a trip to urgent care with one of the kids. Well this time Elisha had been limping on Wednesday night then by Thursday morning he said it hurt when he walked and didn't want to walk anymore. So, instead of going to bible study like I had planned we just headed to the doctor. After x-rays and blood tests the doctor said he is fine he just has this thing called toxic synovitis. It sounds bad but its really nothing. It's really common in boys his age. It is a form of arthritis that is not permanent. It will go away in a few days. Anyways, the doctor said he has to stay on the couch for 2 weeks! Not walk around at all, even after he is feeling better. And if he gets up and walks around to much he could have further problems in the future (I know random)? So anyways, to make a long story short, I now have the challenge of keeping my active my 3 year old on the couch for 2 weeks. Yesterday was day 1 and we watched almost every movie we have, played candy land several times, and read lots of stories. It was kinda turning into a loooong day of being inside. Then last night my friend Hilary came over for dinner and rescued us for the evening. She brought Elisha a new game and a puzzle, which occupied him for the rest of the evening. And hung out with me which was nice to have adult conversation (Thanks Hil!). Anyway, look for lots of boring blogs the next couple weeks as I'll be home with not much to do:)

Josiah has been nice enough to keep Elisha company on the couch.

Summer time blahs

I have had the summer blahs. If there is such a thing. Or maybe it's just the heat getting to me. I think I'm ready for fall to come. I'm ready for the cooler sweater weather and to start making pumpkin bread and drinking hot chocolate in the evening. I love looking out the window and seeing the leaves all over, and kids walking to school. I love that you can walk into stores now and see all the school supplies. I don't know why it's not like I go to school or my kids go to school yet. It just reminds me of fall and the changing of seasons. I love that God gave us different seasons. Just when I get tired of one season the next one comes along.

So, in light of my blah mood I haven't had anything to post about. We've just been hanging around the house during the days trying to stay out of the heat. Although we did venture out to Target yesterday. Not to buy anything just to take advantage of walking around the nice air conditioned store. The kids played with the toys and we walked around and looked at just about everything in the store. It was a fun and free event for the kids and I. Sorry i don't have any pictures to share:) Hopefully my next post will be a little more interesting!

I love your blog

I have to say how much I enjoy blogs. It has almost become a hobby to me to check my friends blogs and update my own. Especially since i'm a stay at home mom it makes me feel connected to the real world. Before I had kids I always enjoyed writing, so this is a little way to do something I enjoy. I love reading my friends blogs. My friend Veronica has the cutest blog and up until she had her 2nd baby "Isaac" she was always so faithful to update her blog. I'm giving her a little slack on keeping up since she has a newborn now. I don't get to see her as often as I use to but I still feel like I know what she up to via her blog. Veronica and her husband Daniel have been awesome friends to Vince and I over the last few years. We go back to when we were all brand new parents. I remember telling Veronica when we were both pregnant with our first baby that we can't eat ketchup anymore because it had something in it that is toxic to our babies ( I thought I had read this somewhere). We both freaked out and talked about how much ketchup we had eaten up to that point. I went back to what I thought I had read and I was totally off.

Then I always keep up on Hannah's blog. Hannah is one of the sweetest people I've ever met. The very first time I met Hannah she gave me loads of baby clothes that happen to be in her car. She also told me she had a crib that I could have, which her and her husband delivered to me the very next day. She is ALWAYS a blessing to others and I pray the Lord's continued blessing upon her. I don't get to see her that often either but I can keep up with her because of her blog. Which by the way always has pictures up of the cute things her 3 year old does. And the most precious pictures of her baby girl.

Next I read Alyssa's blog. We go way back! I remember her when she was just going into High School. I also remember when she first talked about a boy named Jon that she met. Now she's married and her husband "Jon" is the Jr. high pastor at Harvest. She is always so sweet and it's refreshing to run into her at church because the Joy of the Lord shines through her!

Then lastly I read Alicia's blog. I met her years ago also and she just happen to stumble upon my blog a while back. Which made me check out her blog and i've been reading it ever since. She has some AMAZING cooking skills and I love how she has posts recipes with pictures on her blog. I still am trying out the recipes in her archives of things she's made.

So the point of all this is nothing besides I love your blog. Watch for my next post called I love your myspace. Just kidding :)

My cell phone :(

For the last few months my cell phone was broken....but still working. Well, after Josiah got a hold of it a couple weeks ago it is now no longer in service. As of right now I am cell phoneless. So, if anyone wants to call me do the old fashion thing and call my house:)

You know you are offically a "mom" when...

1) When you are eagerly checking the mail each day waiting for these magazines to come. I think yesterday I got a little to excited when they both came on the same day:)
2) When 8:00p.m. feels like midnight
3) When you sleep in until 7:00am and you think you slept in soooo late.
4) When you feel so accomplished and happy that your child ate a plate of vegetables.
5) When you are the only one who understands what your kids are saying.
6) When it takes you 20 minutes to get in and out of your car w/ your kids.
7) When you can clean up toys, entertain your kids, talk on the phone and fix dinner all at the same time.
8) When your purse is full of more kid things then your own things.
9) When you answer over 400 questions a day
10) When you dream at least once a day about something else you could be doing but then realize you have the best job in the world and wouldn't give it up for anything :)

House cleaning tip

Just thought I'd share a cool tip I heard awhile back about keeping your house clean. You see since I stay home 80% of my life now I am always looking for the easiest ways to keep my house picked up despite the two little people following behind me each day messing it up. So I heard if you spend at least 5 minutes in each room a day, twice a day, it would do wonders. And to actually set a timer for the 5 minutes. So during that time you are suppose to straighten things, put things away, and basically clean as much as you can in that amount of time. So I am going to start doing that except I will only do 3 minutes instead of 5. I figure all of my rooms in my house are fairly small and we are pretty good at putting things away after we use them so I think 5 minutes would be to much. And lucky for me my whole house only consists of 5 rooms total. Living room, kitchen, our room, bathroom, and kids room. So the whole thing will only take me 15 minutes. So at twice a day that is only 1/2 hour out of each day...not bad. Maybe if I get really good at it and work even faster I could go down to 2 minutes in each room? So if anyone has any other house cleaning tips that save you time let me know. That's my thing, is how to keep the house clean with cleaning the least amount of time possible. Does that make sense? I just want all the extra time to spend with my kids:)

How is the weather???

I wouldn't know what kind of day it is outside because I'm in the house with paper taped up covering all our windows from the outside. To make a long story short we had lead paint all over our house so we qualified for a program to have the lead paint removed from our house. Which will be safer for our kids. Anyways....I opted to stay in the house while the contractors worked on our house today. All last week I stayed at my mom's while they worked on the inside. Now today they are working on the outside. So......I can be inside, but I just can't come out until they are done today. So this morning my first thought was this is good! now I have to stay inside all day which will force me to clean my house. Which I need to do. Well now it's almost 2:00 my house is clean and I haven't even seen the outside today. I sooooo want to see a little ray of sunlight that I'm peeking through this little crack in one of windows that didn't get covered. It also doesn't help that I have 2 energetic kids running around me in circles. I don't claustrophobic very often but I'm definitely feeling it right now!!!

A mouse in my house :(

Well it happen this morning my biggest fear came true. There was a mouse in my house. We have lived here 6 YEARS and this has never happened before. Some of you maybe thinking "big deal" Well it is to me! I have the biggest FEAR of Mice or Rats or anything that looks like them. I was just sitting on the couch this morning drinking my coffee and a mouse ran from our heater to our bedroom or somewhere that direction. Vince searched our bedroom and the surrounding areas and assured me that it went back into the heater and is "long gone". The only problem is things like this have happen before and I know how they turn out.
Here are a couple examples of why when Vince says....it's "long gone" I just don't believe it.

1) One time there was a lizard in my car so Vince searched my whole car and assured me that the lizard was "long gone" so what happens......3 days later the lizard jumps out on my feet while driving!!!! I drove around with a lizard in my car for 3 days!!!

2) There was a roach in our house (this was the one and only roach in our house ever) so, when I saw it I trapped it in the bathroom until Vince got home from church. When he got home it was gone. He searched the bathroom and part of the house and assured me it was "long gone". So we went to bed and that night in the middle of the night the roach was ON ME!!! Yes crawling on me.

So I have a couple valid reasons why I have a feeling that the mouse is going to show up again today. I just hope it doesn't show up anywhere near me.