My Beautiful Day

This past week I had an absolutely hilarious conversation with Colin while driving him home from preschool.  I was asking him how his day at preschool went and his response cracked me up: "My day was fine and fun." (insert 15 second pause here), "Kami, why can't I kiss girls at school?"  I was taken completely by surprise with this question, so I responded by asking him, "What do you mean?" His answer, "Well, today at school I kissed Grace because I love her and my teachers said that I shouldn't kiss the girls in school.  I really like Grace and I'm in love with her.  Can we go to her house?!" Oh my!  My little man is charming the ladies already!!  We had an extensive talk on why it's not okay to kiss the girls at school, ending with letting him know that it's okay to hold their hand or to just play with them to let them know how much he loves them. His response, "Can we go play at Grace's house and we can ask...

That: - I absolutely LOVE office products.  I get really excited when I get to go to Office Max and shop! - I love to host anything!  Having people in my home makes me happy. - I make the best  chocolate chip oatmeal cookies EVER, but I hardly ever make them due to the ever increasing waistline that happens when there are a lot of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies around! - When I buy a gift for someone that I know they are going to love, I can not wait until the actual occasion for them to open it.  I'm always too excited to see their reaction, and thus it usually gets opened early (this is why Monte and I have " (insert day of the week here)  gifts" (i.e. Monday gift, Thursday gift).  I can't ever wait until the actual Valentine's Day, Birthday or Christmas to give the present! - I have an ex boyfriend with whom I am no longer friends.  However, I am very close friends with his sister, his cousins, his aunt and his mom! - I love being a part of mi...

The other day something major happened to me.  You see, due to the construction going on, I am forced to park my Suburban in the yard at the end of my driveway (as to allow room in my driveway for all of the construction vehicles).  It should also be said that my new parking spot is located on a hill.  A very icy hill. So, the other day I had just arrived back at home from running errands and parked in my new usual spot.  I put the truck in park, applied the parking break and exited the vehicle.  I helped Colin out of the backseat and held his hand while walking down the hill to ensure he wouldn't fall.  Once he was safely on the driveway, I asked him to go up to the house while I got the bags out of the back of the Suburban (he's kind of putzy, so getting up to the house takes quite a bit of time for him!).  Meanwhile, I headed to my mailbox and picked up the mail and proceeded back to the Suburban to get the bags out of the back end.  Due to h...

Things have been extremely busy around here, which is why I've been absent from blogging for awhile now.  As many of you know, we're working on an addition on our home, which will hopefully be complete within the next month or so.  Well, along with building this addition, we are continually finding ourselves at Lowe's and Home Depot purchasing supplies (i.e. lighting, flooring, tile, etc.), which is a fabulously fun thing to do!  However, unlike most people, when we bring the supplies home, we don't have a garage that we can dump everything into.  So, that being said, we've been making due with whatever extra space we have.  While our master closet has already been invaded, we found ourselves having to take away space from the living room to store this stuff, too!  Remember the serenity I talked about in this fabulous chair back in this post ?  The chair I talked about is a great place to rest and relax.  It's this chair ... Unfortunately, the p...

I absolutely love it!

Recently, while wandering through the pages of my own blog, I clicked on my "Stepmom Moments" link and read through all of the posts pertaining to that subject.  It was a true time of reflection for me, a time to see just how far I have come in the fourteen months that I have been a wife and a stepmom.  The transition into this role was a very hard one for me to go through and something that I often questioned; not necessarily the fact of whether or not I should be in this role, because I know I was made for it, but whether or not I should have left my job as quickly as I did.  In the beginning, I longed to go back to work entirely because I knew how to do that.  There weren't many surprises that came in the day that I wasn't trained to handle.  In my stepmom role, however, there are surprises each and every day that I am slowly but surely learning how to deal with. The great thing, however, is that I have realized how far I truly have come.  I have a bet...

This is something that I'm pulling from the recesses of my memory.  Come back with me, will you?  You see, only a mere three years ago, I absolutely hated  the thought of Valentine's Day.  I was 23 years old, single, living with my brother and his family and not wanting anybody to point out the fact that I had nobody to share this holiday with.  It was an extremely hard holiday for me to get through.  I thought that Valentine's Day was merely a day to show me that I was still  alone.  I was still  not in a serious relationship.  I was still  without someone to truly love me. I hated Valentine's Day.  I hated it so much, in fact, that I was known to throw anti-Valentine's parties.  My single friends and I would get together and watch girl power movies - anything with NO romance in it!  I didn't understand the point in having a holiday dedicated specifically to loving someone else when I was farther from that state th...

This week I have changed things up a bit at dinner time.  You see, I recently got my March issue of the "Everyday with Rachael Ray" magazine and went through it with my hubby while we were on our mini retreat in Brainerd this past weekend.  Maybe we were just really hungry, or maybe the pictures truly did look that delicious, but whatever the motivation, we decided that we were going to plan this week's menu around the recipes we found in the magazine.   Oh.My.Goodness!  I don't think we've ever had a more phenomenal idea ... food wise, anyway!  Monday we had 'Ginger Noodles with Chicken' (though the recipe in the magazine called for tofu, we decided to substitute and use chicken, as neither of us like tofu even a little bit)!  Tuesday we had steak tacos that surprised me to the extreme!  The picture truly didn't look very good to me, but Monte was excited about it, so I decided to go ahead and make them.  It was a great decision!  They ...

For as long as I can remember, I've prided myself on the fact that I'm pretty organized with my schedule.  It's a rare occurrence that I miss an appointment, double book myself or completely FORGET what I have going on without a calendar in front of me.  Maybe I should rephrase that to say, "it was  a rare occurrence ...".  You see, once I got married and began managing not just my own calendar, but the calendars of six people, that's when I realized what the phrase "Stepmom Brain" means! It just so happens that this topic was on my mind recently, which worked out wonderfully since JuiceBoxJungle  is teaming up with Verizon  to sponsor this blog post!  They asked me to talk about how I do or do not use my smartphone.  Truth be told, I never felt the need for a smartphone - they just looked so cool  that I totally wanted one.  Good thing my hubby has the connections with the right people, because shortly before our engagement, he was ab...

Since I've been harassed on all sides from people (*cough, cough* my brother TORY *cough, cough*) who want to see pictures of how the addition is going, I figured it is about time that I get my butt outside and take those pictures!  So, without further adieu, here you go brother! :) This is a view from the front (it's dark when our contractor leaves, so I couldn't get a picture without his truck in it!).  The stonework on the front is now complete, though I don't have pictures of it to show you (my hubby does on his cell phone, maybe I can convince him to email it to me!). This is a close up of the stonework on the far side of the garage.  The top panel of this garage door is going to be replaced to match the windowed one on the other garage door. This is the upstairs of our addition.  The far room is going to be a guest bedroom (or bedroom for our children should any more come along, God willing!).  The room in the foreground is our theater room. Now, le...

Can I be honest?  I used to never RSVP to anything.  If I got a wedding invite, I'd toss the RSVP aside and tack the invite up on my refrigerator (okay, well I wouldn't really tack  it, but you get the picture).  If I received an invite to a birthday party, a family reunion or really any gathering of any kind, I threw the RSVP away and attended if I could and didn't attend if I was unable to. In my mind, it was no big deal.  I wasn't hurting anybody by not responding, they'd be thrilled if I showed up (yep, I do have a pretty big ego!  I tease, I tease) and disappointed if I didn't, but they wouldn't stop living because of me being there or not.  I thought it didn't really matter whether or not I let them know I would be there. Then I started planning our wedding, and RSVPs took on a whole new meaning to me.  We were elated  when people would send back the RSVP (especially since we already put the postage on it - all they had to do was wr...