My Beautiful Day

I'm beginning to wonder if my absense from blogging is a pattern in the making?! Well, I guarantee you that it actually IS, at least for the next couple of weeks. Why is that? Well, because my brother, Tory, and sister-in-law, Lisa, just welcomed a new baby girl into their family on Monday morning (wait, that's yesterday right?! Holy moly it feels like more than one day has passed since then!!). Say hello to the absolutely beautiful Abigail Grace! My upcoming absense comes partly due to the fact that I am going to Jamestown, ND to spend a few days with my brother and his family. I will leave tomorrow morning and return home again on Friday. That being said, on Saturday morning our family is leaving for a week "up north" at a cabin near Brainerd, MN. We are going to spend the week fishing, swimming, reading, relaxing ... oh, and I am determined that I am going to learn how to knit ... so I'm going to do that this coming week as well! :) All-in-all, I'm just giv...

I have received many emails asking me where I've gone, so I'm guessing it's about time that I jump back into my blog world again! Life has been incredibly busy, with this past weekend topping the charts of overwhelmingly busy! Thankfully, though, it was also completely refreshing and rewarding in the same. Isn't it amazing how God does that for you? When you know that you're going to be extremely busy, He provides rest in the middle of it all! So, here's a quick recap of my weekend ... :) Friday was spent with Claire and I meeting up with Tanya and Breanna (my sister and my niece) and doing some great shopping! We started off at Ikea in hopes to find some end tables for my living room. Instead of end tables, I ended up finding some beautiful lamps and an arrangement (of which my boys lovingly refer to as "the dead sticks in a bowl") of branches in a very tall vase which are now sitting in the corner of my living room. All in all, it was an incr...

After three days of driving all day long (or what felt like it) to drop Claire off and pick her up from horse camp (one hour each way, twice per day), after endless moments of not cleaning my house and not doing my laundry, after a date night with my husband and a Bible study with him as well ... after all of that I can say that my schedule is sufficiently BUSY! Thus why I haven't been blogging. You would think that I have a ton to talk about now, but instead I'm going to leave with saying just what I've said. Why? Because Claire and I are going shopping with my sister, Tanya, and my niece, Breanna and we have to leave in less than an hour!! Sheesh :) Life is just SO rough sometimes *wink wink*!!!

Welcome to Blog Hop Tuesday! Today's theme is "Three Things You Might Not Know About Me", so without further adieu ... One I love love LOVE planning and organizing events! This comes from my obsessively organized side. If I can plan anything from having dinner guests (which I LOVE to do), throwing birthday parties, or even helping to plan weddings - I just LOVE it! I don't want to be paid for it, I just want to plan it!! :) Two My sister is one of my favorite people in the entire world. We talk on the phone almost every day during the school year, and now that summer is here and we both have kids at home, we don't get to chat as often. I MISS HER! She was the person who helped me to truly define my path in life and to head in the direction that God intended. She also helped me in every stage of planning my wedding and has walked by me through the transition into life as a wife and mother. Tanya and her family are adopting a precious little girl from China...

While having guests over for dinner last Thursday, I did not tell my 11-year-old daughter, Claire, to shut up while she was telling them how much of a product stocker I am. By no means would I have eight back-up bottles of handsoap in my cupboard and be embarassed when Claire would choose to announce this. By NO MEANS would I ever use the phrase "shut up" with her - I am a much better parent than that! Since having my wisdom teeth removed this past Friday, I have not been SO sick of the soft-foods diet that I'm on that I would ask our wonderful MckMama for some ideas of what to eat since sweet Stellan eats an entirely pureed diet as well. By no means would I be searching to see what various babies eat just to get something more appealing into my stomach! In fact, I am NOT sitting here at 9:15am eating ice cream for breakfast! That would be absurd :) I have far more common sense as to eat something of nutritional value as opposed to ice cream so early in the morn...

Errr .. wisdom TEETH. That's right, this morning I had them taken out. I will admit to being incredibly scared on the way in, as I had never been put under anestetia (sp?) before. Thankfully I have an amazing husband who was reminding me that "God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind". Walking into the room was nerve wracking, the doctor said a bunch of mumbo jumbo that I don't remember, and then they gave me the anestetia. Next thing I know, I'm waking up and Monte is sitting next to me, just waiting for me to come around :) So, all in all, it really wasn't bad! Now, I'm at home in bed, eating a lot of ice cream and watching Friends on DVD. I'm sleepy and about to conk out, but just wanted to update for those who were waiting to find out how it went! Pain is minimal. Not really swollen at all. Content, at least :)

Welcome to the MckLinky's Blog Hop. Today's features our favorite picture. I don't have just one favorite, but this one is definitely up there on the list!! This is Claire and I at her cousin, Reed's, wedding, shortly after Monte and I were engaged. We had a really fun, but really tiring night! These are our "we're so tired we want to go home" faces: Join in the fun!!!

I have completely amazing news: Colin went poop in the toilet!!!! Yessssssssssss .... finally :) (Claire is telling me she wishes that I had taken a picture of it to put it on here for all of you. Thankfully, I am going to spare you the pretty details!)

Happy Independence Day! What a day it was :) We had a very lazy morning, which included sleeping in until 8:30am (which rarely happens here!). It was so nice! We got up, made pancakes for breakfast and got ready to head out for our day of adventures at the MN Zoo! What a wonderful day it was! We were a little disappointed to miss out on the bears, as we just couldn't see them while staring at their exhibit. We stopped there to take a picture, anyway! We were surprised when, less than five seconds later, the bear appeared directly behind us! It was amazing to be that close to the furry little creature!! We then visited the prairie dogs, the Africa exhibit, the zebras, the giraffes, the wildebeasts, the wolves, the panthers and every other animal that is under the sun at the zoo! It was such an insanely busy day, but when we left, the smiles were still on our faces ... ... and our kiddos were happy (though one was more than tuckered out and he fell asleep as soon as we hit the road!...

In light of my desire to respond to recent commenters who choose to remain anonymous, or who give a name but give no means to contact them, I have uploaded a new comment system to my blog called Disqus . I heard about this comment system from MckMama's blog and have found it to be useful, as it will allow me to leave comments on people's comments! One tip that I have learned by being an avid reader of MckMama's blog is that it may take awhile for the Disqus system to load. That being said, I also discovered that, once I created a Disqus profile for myself, it loaded without problems and very quickly! So, this is my trial run at my new comment system - let me know what you think!!

In my most recent post I received an anonymous comment regarding my relationship with my husband and I want to address it. Here is the comment, for those who did not see it: Anonymous said... what does a 25 yr old single woman and a 42 yr old man have in common??????? It sounds to me and looks like to me that it was all about money! In a yrs time you went from living with your brother and "just making it" to being a "stepmom"! How does that work? Sounds kinda fishy to me. July 1, 2009 8:49 PM One thing that I have to say, first and foremost, is that I am not at all offended by this comment (though my step-daughter, Claire, who is sitting next to me says "I am!"). I understand that, if you don't know me and you don't know my husband, if you don't know us together, it certainly can look like something really crazy. The thing is, it IS crazy, but a really good kind of crazy! What 25-year-old do you know who would give up a good job that she...