Boyish Charm: June 2006

Nicolas

Jonathan Continued...

Jonathan...

Zachary

A first for me..

I made meatballs today for the first time ever. Can you believe that in the 12 years of my adulthood life I have never ever made them. Thanks to the help of my good friend, Kristin, they turned out marvelous! And they were easy peasy too....

Amazingly!!!

My kids wanted to cooperate for a photo shoot today. I got the three younger ones individually!

Now... I am going to make you all wait while I edit them! ;)

Wow..

We have had a horrible week around here. Part of the beginning of it was us finding one of Don's buddies dead at 4am while we were out working last Monday morning. He was in an automobile accident where he lost control of the vehicle and flipped it. Unfortunately he was in an open jeep with no seatbelt. Horrible! (there is much more to the week, but I won't bore you all) We ended it the week with the funeral!

I wasn't able to go due to a sitter, but Don definitely went. It was a huge funeral. The kid was only 19 and had just graduated high school.

I guess just from the whole situation it got Don thinking about things. He came home and told me we needed to talk (I hate that sentence, usually isn't good stuff). He told me that in the line of work that he does, the chance that he might not come home one day is greater than many other jobs that he could be doing. (this is true)

He has now decided that he wants me to be half owner of everything company wise. He is afraid that if something happens that everything could go into probate and I could be screwed financially. (of course we don't have a life insurance policy, something we need to get) He wants the company to stay alive even if he isn't. He talked about me going down and getting all the certifications that he has so that I know what is going on. I already deal with quite a bit of company related issues anyhow, but he wants me to know all the legal bits too.

He knows that I would have plenty of support from others that are knowledgeable in this field also and we both think that my dad would step up and help me out.

I have to have someway to support our huge family if (God Forbid) something happened to him.

It's just one of those conversations that you really don't want to have to discuss. Why would you want to talk about the future and the person you care the most about not being in it?!?

Freaking out today!!!

I have my first professional photo shoot today. In 5 hours!!! I am doing our little league teams season pictures. I honestly think I can capture great pictures. We have been in sports long enough and I have bought enough packages to see what parents want. I am just nervous because A. I am very insecure... B. I am going to feel like an idiot being the center of attention and trying to capture these parents babies at their best... and C. I never am good and trying to sell myself. I actually hope to make some moeny at this and get my name out there to do more in the future.

Although.... There are storms moving in and it is supposed to rain, so it might be all up in the air as to whether tonight will be the night for photos or not. Regardless, I need to get prepared!

Pray for me that God will give me the strength I need to get through this and act professional!

6/16/06 To Do List

On a message board that I am on, some of the girls do a daily to do list. I have not participated in it until today. I think I might try to do it more often because when you go back and look at everything that you have accomplished during the day, it makes you feel so good. Gee... and some people think I don't do a thing all day!

~~Wash and Dry clothes
~~Fold Clothes
~~Put Clothes away
~~Put away load of stuff that came from old house yesterday
~~Put away and sort clothes of mine that came from old closet (most doesn't fit)
~~Clean living room
~~Clean kitchen
~~Clean dining room
~~Clean breakfast area
Clean downstairs bathrooms
~~Clean my bedroom/sitting room
~~Clean up backyard and get the big trash moved to a spot until it can go to dump.
~~Wrap Zachary's birthday presents
~~Go to grocery store and get food for party tomorrow
~~Go to WIC to pick up new folder and vouchers
~~Give Jonathan a bath for his outing with ga-ma
Work on Package sheet for my photo shoot next week
~~Scout out a place that I want to do the photos
Call and reschedule appt's that were missed since we have moved....
my dr appt.... have to call back monday, their systems are down.
~~jonathan dr appt
tyler dentist... Call back monday, no answer today
~~wic appt
Start sorting through paper piles in the office/scrapbook room so we can get it all filed away
~~Take Tyler to have team photos done.
~~Clean the boys bedroom
~~Clean hallway upstairs
Clean upstairs bathrooms
Clean playroom
Clean nursery
~~Post to blog

"I wouldn't trade places"

I found this great new blog and website. It is called Larger Families and I absolutely love it. I can relate with so much there (probably because I DO have a larger family). They have a blog that several ladies post too. I just loved one of todays posts. I feel as if I could have written this myself...
Here it is....

I Wouldn't Trade Places
My husband and I just celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary. Thirteen years. Some days it seems as if we have always been together--that adolescent memories are merely detailed dreams. Other times it feels as if we were just married the other day; and I wonder, “Can it really have been thirteen years ago?!”On our wedding day, after the ceremony and as we geared up for endless photos, my Uncle hugged me and said, “Congratulations, but I wouldn’t trade places with you guys for anything in the world.” I was stunned by his comment and also offended by it. How could anyone not want to be us? We were so in love. We were young and attractive, dressed in beautiful clothing, and being surrounded by loved ones who had set aside a day of their lives to support us. Who wouldn’t trade places with us? I thought about his comment often that day and in the weeks that followed. I thought about it quite often that first year of marriage, as we struggled to learn to live together and realized that we had a lot to learn about each other. At times it was surprising how difficult marriage was. I was nineteen years old, my husband was twenty-three years old—we were naïve. We fought a lot the first year. Thankfully, we loved a lot, too. At the time, I felt that I loved Tim so much that I couldn’t imagine ever loving him more. I still could not understand my Uncle’s comment.After a couple years of early marriage, fertility treatments, miscarriages, and the adoption of our first child, I finally started to get a glimpse into why my Uncle would dare make such a comment to newlyweds. Marriage was work. It took a lot of effort and compromise to get things comfortable. The more time I spent married and the more life-altering experiences I shared with my husband, the more I loved him and felt like I was relieved to have the difficult beginning behind us. I certainly didn’t feel like I wanted to start over.Over the years, I have come to fully understand that marriage gets better with time. If you are willing to work at it, that is. It becomes a blessing of feeling secure and content. Knowing you aren’t just sharing your life with your best friend, but are sharing the joy and burden of raising children, and of worrying about finances, and sharing household responsibilities is so much more rewarding with someone you love.We have been through so much together—both good and bad. My love for my husband is deeper than I could ever have dreamed it would be, and I know that it will continue to strengthen the longer we are married. Being with him is relaxing and fun. I certainly understand him better now than when we were first married. I don’t ever have to wonder what he thinks of me, or try to act a certain way. I can be my true self. We can sit in silence on our date night and feel comfortable, or we can find endless topics to discuss and be reassured that we agree on almost everything. We don’t have to play guessing games, trying to figure out what the other one means or wants. After thirteen years, we just are. We are as one. I agree with my Uncle now. I wouldn’t trade places with any newlyweds either. They have so far to travel to get where we are.
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Wendy is the homeschooling mom to 6 amazing children (with 2 more in the works). She writes about it all here: http://flippinsweet.typepad.com/. Email her at: rainbowendy@yahoo.com for the password.

You'd only believe it from pictures

... this is actually a continuation to our Sunday outing, but it so deserves its own post. After our canal ride we went to Bass Pro Shops. As we were getting ready to pull out of the parking lot onto Reno, Don looks to the West to make sure traffic is clear and then hollars out "Holy Sh*t, there's a herd of elephants walking down Reno!!!" I of course turned my head and sure enough... Elephants!
We were able to pull out ahead of them and headed to the parking lot on the opposite side of the street, I had to have pictures!
All in all we assume that they were from the Circus that was in town this weekend at the Ford center. They must have parked a mile out and decided to just walk the animals. Needless to say... not something that you would normally see in downtown OKC...

Sunday Family Outing

Sunday we decided that we wanted to take the boys to see Cars. We chose the movie theater in Bricktown which we have been to several times and really enjoy. It is also only about 10 minutes away. So my mother in law watched Jonathan that afternoon and we headed out... Don, myself and the 4 big boys.

This is the movie theater that we went to. It is right off the canal. We had lunch at the new sonic and then walked over for our movie. The movie was great. It was the first time that Nicolas and Zachary saw a movie in the theater and they actually did pretty well. The did get a bit restless closer to the end, but they loved the movie. Don and I laughed and laughed. I definitely recommend seeing the movie.

After the movie we decided to take the boys on a canal ride. It isn't something that we get to do often and we figured that they would enjoy it.

And here are some really neat things that you can see on the ride besides the businesses...etc. The sculptures were made by a man locally from Norman, OK. The man that is driving the wagon is a self sculpture of the artist. The murals on the wall (only 2 of the 3 that I was able to get) were painted by a UCO art professor and his students.

Cool finds

The best crafter's mall that I know of is on the southside OKC. I don't get over there too much but when I do I go ga-ga....
I was on that side of town last night and only had a few kiddos with me so I figured I would stop in. I was so glad I did. The dealer that I drool over pretty much all of her stuff is going out of business due to her husband being ill. All of her merchandise was 70% off.... I walked out of there spending $34 and that was only because one item was from another booth and not on sale... Here are my goodies.....