Friday, May 28, 2010

he said whoops.

tim broke our computer, so i have been disconnected from the interwebs. it's been a blessing in some ways, but really, really annoying at other times. ol timmy boy always complains about how slow and buggy our computers get, but he's the one who makes them that way. good thing he's cute. (he hears that a lot at our house. our vanity is the only thing that keeps our family together.)

i don't really have anything to write about. i'm at my parent's now, with no children, and i'm ignoring them while they pray in the other room just to write this. and check facebook of course. so to a certain someone who demanded i write something-yes watermellen, i'm looking at you- here it is. there were also demands for funny but i don't think it's going to happen. when the computer gets resurrected i've got some pretty good pics to post.


i think i better give my momma my attention. i luv ya folks, but she's my momma for pete's sake and she's pretty fantastic.

Monday, May 17, 2010

that'll do.

after the last couple posts, it's only fair to share our very good day today.

tim had the day off, which is becoming like a holiday around here. back when he had a "normal" schedule, the weekends weren't really that big of a deal. now, i look forward to days off oh so much.

after i fed the boys breakfast, tim took them on an "adventure". (pretty much any activity that is daddy only is called an adventure because when ben was little (and max now), ben didn't like going places without me. so if we played it up as an "adventure", he was game. and really any amount of time spent with tim IS and adventure, because no one, including him, really knows what's going to happen.)having tim up and functioning before 9:30 is a pretty big deal, so having all three of them out the door by that time was HUGE!

tim took the boys to his mom's while he got some jobs done and i got to have quiet, uninterrupted work time. by the time i saw the boys in the afternoon, they were the cutest little guys i had ever seen. amazing the power of just a few hours to refresh the momma spirit!

we stopped at freddy's on the way home for an early dinner, so when we got home we just got to chill as a family. so. nice.



(uncle sam wants YOU!)

around six i gave the boys a snack and sent them outside to burn off energy, where they made grass hats-putting freshly cut grass on their heads. (my Godfather/brother/neighbor came over and mowed our foot-high yard last night. i almost cried.) after the grass hats, tim gave them baths and they went to bed.

THEN!!! i got to go on an awesome date with my husband. an already great day totally blown off the charts. i got "cuted" up because i was tired of being a troll mommy and we went to timberline. the food was soooo good and it was nice and mellow because it was a late dinner. in an alternate life, tim and i meet up for late dinners often at quiet spots around town. but tonight i was just happy to get to tell a story without interruption, no potty breaks were needed, and the only food i cut was my own.

on the way home, i was cold, so as a joke i put on ben's sweatshirt.



it was a lot easier going on than coming off. i got stuck for a bit while tim laughed at me.



i love this dress. i can't help but feel happy and carefree when i wear it. (except for the windy day that i wore it to mass. that's a doozy of a story.) and my red shoes. they also make me happy.





our days haven't been quite so "challenging" lately. i've been trying to reach out to our support network of family and friends more, which helps break up the monotony and keeps me and the boys from getting totally done with each other. it's silly really-we chose to live were we do so we can be close to our families and dear friends. but i don't like to "bother" them and ask for help. but my boys really are wicked cute and quite fun and for the most part, it's more like sharing the boys with our loved ones than bothering them. i just have to put my obnoxious pride aside that tells me i should be able to do all this on my own. supermom i am not. but that's okay because God has given me what i need. and then some extra blessings on top of that.

so reach out and feel the love. and pray out loud. i find that really helps!

Friday, May 7, 2010

hmmmmm.

that last post is a hard one to follow.

the sunday evening after i posted it, the boys and i went out to my brother's house. my dear friend and sister (in law) commented that she had read my blog recently and was happy to hear we were doing well and were finding a new balance with tim's job and our family life. i was puzzled, having posted the blow-out "tired" post most recently. but she was referencing the post before that one, written only a couple of days before "tired", which talked about how it seemed like tim's schedule was settling down, the boys and i were happy to be able to be getting outside, etc. yes, i realized, that in the span of a few days i offered totally different view points of our life. talk about bi-polar.

but that's just how i am. when things are crappy, it's hard to remember that that's not how my life ALWAYS is. (which is another reason this space is nice-i can go back and dwell on a really good moment when there have been too many rotten ones and the fog is getting dense.) i have a hard time keeping perspective, but verbalizing often helps me.

my bi-polar posts were also proof of how one week seems much, much longer these days. sometimes tim gets two days off in a row. the day before the two day stretch, once the boys are in bed, i feel like i can breath. finally, we'll have some time with him and we can get some things done. and then the days blink by. and the other five days and the crazy schedule seems like they stretch on for weeks.

the good part of all this is i have come to appreciate my dear spouse and parenting teammate sooooooooooooo much more. i see and feel how much better our family is when we're all together. sadly, i used to often take tim's good traits for granted and often focused more on the areas that needed improvement. although i'm still not a perfect wife (please resist outbursts of laughter at that heinous understatement), i try to be more thankful for all the things tim does really well and to verbally tell him how much we love having him around and how much we just...love him.

after writing that last post, i did at times feel like, maybe in fact, i am just a bad mommy. but i know that's not true. your kind comments reaffirmed that. but what really affirmed it for me was:

last weekend i sat behind two of my brothers' families during my nephew's First Communion. i'll admit, i was very distracted by my beautiful nieces and nephews, but more, i was taken by the beauty of watching my sisters as mothers. these are women who are also tired. women who have given their bodies over and over for their children, lost too much sleep, have husbands who are gone more than they would like. mommas who stay home with their babes at this point in their lives because they know that that's what is best for their families. i got to see little glimpses of their true love for their children-subconscious things like stroking their hair and kissing their heads, checking on them while they sat or played underfoot as the congregation stood, holding them even though their arms were tired. no, they may not always gush on and on about their children and how motherhood completes them and how they couldn't possibly be any happier. true love isn't defined by warm fuzzies. i looked up to the cross and thought about true love. sacrificial love.

so sometimes i might feel like a bad wife and mother because my thoughts and feelings aren't always pure bliss. and while i do truly believe that we called to be joyful in our vocations, when i'm not so good at that, i'm reassured by my actions that, yes, i really do love my guys.