Traditions

One of the things I loved most about growing up with all four of my siblings, was the holidays and the traditions we had to look forward to each year.

Take Easter for instance.  We are a very religious family so of course Christ was at the center of it.  But we also had fun with the other aspects of the holiday.  We never really believed in the Easter Bunny or got our pictures taken with the evil looking fuzzy costume guy (why can't anyone make an Easter Bunny that doesn't look like it crawled out of a Steven King novel?).  Anyways, back to Easter traditions.  Every year we would dye Easter eggs.  I remember the smell of vinegar, the dye staining my fingers, and and trying to see how dark I could get my eggs.  I remember picking out my Easter dress and finding my Easter bonnet and shiny shoes.  I remember getting my mom a corsage and picking iris's from the flower bed in the front yard.  But mostly I remember every Easter morning waking up and running to the living room and sitting just in the hallway with my Easter basket, looking at all the candy that had mysteriously appeared overnight.  I knew it was my parents who hid the candy all over the room, but I never quite figured out how they did it without me once catching them in the act.  Now that I have kids of my own, I realize how deeply little ones can sleep (once you actually get them to sleep that is).  This is one of many traditions I have the joy to pass on to my kids.  The Weatherman's family would make Easter basket with toys and a scavenger hunt to find the basket.  This is easy to combine with my family tradition, so our kids can celebrate both.

The scavenger hunt part will come when they get older.

I also recently found out I got the 4th of July off work so we will be able to go back and visit family this year, our first time in a while visiting on the 4th of July.  The tradition with my family is blowing things up.  We start the day attending a parade, then the rest of the day is BBQ, fire, lots of food, fireworks, and did I mention blowing things up?  The first time I brought the Weatherman to a family 4th of July celebration I remember he didn't really know what to do with himself.  Let's just say the blowing things up and setting things on fire was not part of his family tradition.  But his is fun too.  Swimming and a pot luck.  This year will be a good year for the kids to go back and experience a good ol' family celebration of food, fun, and fire!

Considering how much we liked to blow stuff up, it is surprising we never seriously injured each other.  Aw memories!

And let's not forget Christmas!  How I love our Christmas traditions!  We never believed in Santa, something that we are changing with our kids because I believe in the magic and fun that Santa represents.  But we did get to open all our presents on Christmas eve.  We still got a stocking with smaller gifts on Christmas day, and again I never caught my parents filling the stocking, despite waking up in the middle of the night to "go to the bathroom".  Other Christmas traditions include going to "look at lights" and visiting the live nativity scene that had live animals, and several other light displays, one of which portrayed the entire life of Christ.  There was also the tradition of climbing into the attack and dragging down all the decorations and putting up our old artificial tree.  How I loved that smell, that prickly feeling, and all the memories that would come flooding back with each decoration.  The Weatherman's family did believe in Santa and opened their presents on Christmas day, and both of our families had pot luck dinners with way too much food.  We have introduced the "elf on a shelf" tradition with Goober and next year maybe Bubs will get into it a bit too.  It has been another tradition that we have made our own.

There are many other traditions too: Halloween costumes and riding on the back of my dad's blue pickup truck as we went from house to house.  Thanksgiving at my grandparents and playing in piles of leaves after eating way too much food.  Memorial day visiting graves and looking at flags. And then there are the other traditions that have nothing to do with holidays.  There were so many Saturday's my dad would say "let's go feed the ducks" and we would pile into the big blue van and grab some old bread and cereal and drive to all the "secret" places where we knew from experience the Canada Geese would rest at.  There was also the football games at my grandpa's house, with all of us crowded in his living room with his 51" big screen TV.  And of course the pageant nights with my mom and sister, each of us with our own sheet of paper keeping track of our favorite girl's score and oo-ing and ah-ing over the gowns.

My family may not have had a lot of money, but we have so many good memories.  I am so grateful to my wonderful mom and dad who showed me that marriage does not have to be perfect, but you can make a warm home full of memories.  And to my siblings who taught me how to love and fight and compete and forgive.  These things more than anything are the reason that I wanted to have at least 3 children: these traditions and the memories and the happiness of childhood.  The friendship that I share with my four siblings and the relationship that I have with my parents now that I am an adult and parent myself.  The traditions that I can pass down to my children, and experience all over again through their eyes.

Signs of a Good Day

There has been a lot going on, but we try and carve out those special family moments when we can.  Saturday started off wonderfully as the four of us cuddle up in bed and watched TV.  This weekend was the first weekend since the beginning of the year that I did not have to work.  So what did we do?  We loaded up the kids and the wagon and we went to my work.  But this time, it was as a family out enjoying the zoo.  I wish I could say I didn't think about work, but that is impossible for me to do with so many projects and events going on.  But we had a good time.  Goober was sad the elephants were not out at first because as I told her, they were getting their feet worked on.  We did get to see them later on and Goober of course had to announce "their feet all better now right?".  It was a beautiful day to visit the zoo and we had a good time.

You may notice in these pictures that Bubs is holding a yellow stick.  It is actually a drum stick to a toy drum he got for Christmas.  No idea why, but Bubs is obsessed with this stick!  He had it the whole time we were at the zoo and did loose or drop it once.  Then he had to take it to church today too.  Not sure what is so exciting about a yellow drum stick, but he loves it!

So after we get the kids down for a late nap, Goober gets to go play in the sprinkler since it was almost 90 degrees out.  The first sprinkler of the year and she was thrilled!  She wanted to play again today after her nap, but seeing as how it is not even 50 degrees, we had to explain it was too cold.  

However, a sign that it was a good day was two kids who were knocked out at bed time and a bathtub with a bunch of dirt and scum at the bottom after the water was let out.  That means everyone played hard and had a good time.

And on another note, Bubs finally decided that he could crawl!  I was kind of dreading this day since after Goober learned how to move, I firmly decided that movement is over rated and stationary in children is good.  I was sitting on the couch eating dinner (we don't use the table as much as we should for meals, bad I know) and Bubs was playing on the floor.  I looked down and he was crawling across the floor as big as you please like he had been doing it forever.  I freaked out, got the camera, and of course he promptly stopped.  After some encouragement he did crawl again, at which point Goober promptly go jealous and tried to steal the show.  Now he is a man on a mission and nothing will stop him!  We might have to pull out the baby gates soon.

Well, I guess that is all I am going to be able to write right now since this post has taken way longer to compose than it should have since I have a pint size helper who keeps trying to type on the computer and then looking at me pathetically and saying "mamaama" when I make him stop.  

Once again, a sign of a good day.

Playing in the rain!

Warming up after the rain with hot chocolate

Faith

Crazy is an understatement for what we have been going through lately.  $880 dollars for a root canal for me.  $500 for wisdom teeth extraction for the Weatherman.  $100 for asthma medication for Goober.  Goober was sick last weekend and I have been out of work for the last two days sick as well.  And let's not forget the thing we have not mentioned, and are generally afraid of mentioning.  It's like if we don't talk about it then maybe it won't happen.  It's like if we actually admit that the Weatherman did not get his contract renewed for the next school year then it will actually come true.  But we need to admit it, because we need to come up with some solutions.

We are trying to have faith.  God is certainly testing us right now.  And I keep reminding myself of all the blessings we have in our lives.  Goober and Bubs being right up there at the top.  But it has been hard.  So hard.

The good news is the Weatherman will continue to get paychecks through July, so we have time to pray and figure things out.  But after that I am not sure what we will do.  He is working hard to finish his transition-to-teaching program which will allow him to get his teaching license.  He has to finish up his classes this semester and then take one more class in the summer.  He will continue to look for teaching jobs in this district and the surrounding ones so there is hope that something might become available.  In the past he has been a sub, but a substitute pay with one child in daycare versus substitute pay with two children in daycare is not really worth the difference.

We had intended to pull the kids out of daycare for the summer since that would save us over $2,000.  But there is a chance that we would lose our daycare spot and not be able to get them back in if this happens.  So this is kind of up in the air too.

Despite all the extra expenses lately, we have still done pretty good and are still on track for being debt free (minus the house) by the end of the year.  We have been brainstorming ways to accelerate the debt free process since this would help a lot when our annual income gets cut in half.

So much to think about.  So many decisions to make. So many ways to trust the Lord.  I know it could be worse.  At least my job has the insurance so we won't lose that.  At least the kids are mostly healthy, despite Goober being diagnosed with asthma and being placed on a variety of maintenance medications that she has to take daily for the foreseeable future.  It could be so much worse!  I am constantly reminded of a dear friend who lost her 5 year old to cancer.  No mother should ever go through that.  At least my babies are not fighting as her brave girl had to fight.

At least my job is stable and steady and safe.  I just wish I didn't have to work quite as much.  This weekend would have been the first weekend I had off since the beginning of the year.  But now with me missing work the last two days because of being sick, I am going to have to go in to work this weekend to catch up.  I don't want to give up time with the kids, so I will probably go to work when Goober is napping and take Bubs with me.  The Weatherman has some big projects due for his classes so he is going to need to focus this weekend too.  I have a big event in just 19 days (eek!) that I am nowhere near ready for.  I know it will all come together, but until our annual Earth Day event is over, I will stress about it.  There is so much to do!  Then after Earth Day, there is my busy season with lots of field trips, and from there we jump right into camps.  And oh my goodness camps!  I haven't even started thinking about the two camps I am supposed to write.  But I will get them finished.  I always get my project finished.  It will come together and things will work out like they always do.

Because I have faith.  Because we have had hard times before and the Lord has never let us down yet.  Even in our darkest times, such as when we lost our angel baby, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  His plans are to prosper us and not to harm us, to give us hope and a future.

I will hold on to these promises.  And I will have hope.  And faith.

9 months in...

9 months out

St. Patrick's Day!

Queen Elsa in her Elsa dress that Grandma and Grandpa G. got her

She loves her dress and cape!

All the medicine our sweet Goober has to take now