Why is it we can never eat dinner at a decent time on the weekends? I am really working on getting the kids to bed earlier. I want to start getting them up earlier as they have been sleeping until 9:30 on most mornings. Sure, it sounds great. Leaves me lots of time to be with just me in the mornings but it also cuts into our day. My kids wake up slow, especially Rebecca. So, when she does not get up until 9:30 (sometimes as late as 10:00), she ends up wanting breakfast around 11:00. Well, the pribelm you say is it is almost lunch time. Zachary usually wakes up before her. He takes a nap by 1:00. Our day is just gone before we even got to get it started. Anyway, back to the weekends. Jim cooks on the weekends. He spends all day sometimes, hounding me as to what he should cook. I do not want to have to decide. That is what I do five other days of the week and it is nice to be able to have two off. Don't ask me what I want you to cook! Then he figures it out (or on the rare occasion already has an idea) yet he still never seems to start cooking until at least 6:00 putting dinner lots of times around 7:00. I want to eat early on the weekends so I feel like I have some time left to my day. Plus ECI comes on Monday so I like to have the kids to bed at a time that still leaves me time to clean up.
Uugghh!!!
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Fabulous Weekend
Ahh, back to the daily grind of my life. But befoire I get to that, I had a fabulous weekend. I attended the Women of Faith Conference here in Houston at the Toyota Center. I went to the pre-conference on Friday from 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM. I had to leave my house by 7:15. We (ladies from church) carpooled over there. The morning was filled with wonderful music and our speakers were Sheila Walsh and Dr. Henry Cloud. Wow! They were great! I had read Sheila's book "God Has A Dream For Your Life" over the summer with my church bookclub. It was a great book. Dr. Henry Cloud was someone who I had not heard of and I was thrilled to have gotten the chance to hear him speak. I can not wait to be able to get some of his books and read those. After the preconference we had until 7:00 PM to hang out. There were fuve of us. We challenged each other to heed Dr. Cloud's words and share some secrets about ourselves that we were afraid to share with others. I did not share my struggle with depression but was able to share some other things in my life. It was nice to get to know these ladies better and just to have that time to relax. We ate dinner at a nearby hotel together and then headed back to the conference.
We had a surprise performance by a great Christian singer, Mark Shultz. Wow! It was a superb performance. What a great guy her is. We also got to seee Anita Renfroe, a wonderfully funny lady, perform some of her great comedy songs. And we sang some more great music and listened to some other great speakers. We heard Patsy Clairmont, MArilyn Meberg, Thelma Wells, Sandi Patty (who sang for us), and a singing performance by Nicole Nordeman. The conference wound up Friday about 10:00 PM and we arrived back home close to 11:00. Then we met again at 7:15 AM on Saturday morning and headed back to the conference. More of the same bu t lengthier segments. All wonderful and funny.
Definitely worth going to. I hope to be able to go again. From what I understand there was about 12,000 attendees.
We had a surprise performance by a great Christian singer, Mark Shultz. Wow! It was a superb performance. What a great guy her is. We also got to seee Anita Renfroe, a wonderfully funny lady, perform some of her great comedy songs. And we sang some more great music and listened to some other great speakers. We heard Patsy Clairmont, MArilyn Meberg, Thelma Wells, Sandi Patty (who sang for us), and a singing performance by Nicole Nordeman. The conference wound up Friday about 10:00 PM and we arrived back home close to 11:00. Then we met again at 7:15 AM on Saturday morning and headed back to the conference. More of the same bu t lengthier segments. All wonderful and funny.
Definitely worth going to. I hope to be able to go again. From what I understand there was about 12,000 attendees.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
I need meds. I am sure of it. I can not stop getting absolutely frustrated with my family. Rebecca is the worst. Everytime I ask her to do something I get a no or an I do not want to. I try to remain calm and I just can't. I end up screaming at her. And I mean screaming! It is awful, and it is a behavior that she also does which makes matters worse. Problem is I do not even have a doctor here yet. I can not seem to bring myself to call and schedule an appointment. Why? I do not know. I know how badly I need to see one. Not just for my depression but for medical reasons as well. Why is this so hard for me?
On another note, I have been attending a bible study. It is called A Women's Heart, God's Dwelling Place by Beth Moore. I do not know yet what I think of it. This is so new for me. I know I hate missing the morning with my children. I miss them terribly during it. Especially when Zachary does not want to leave me and Rebecca gets crocodile tears begging me to just let us stay home. I also am not really good at understanding the bible. After doing my homework for the week I do not feel like I knew anymore then I did. Then I go to class and they explain what it means (sometimes) and I think wow, I never could have gotten that out of it. It makes me feel frustrated and clueless. I am trying hard to be a better christian and get closer to God. Why? I do not know. Maybe because I see others who have and it looks good. It is hard though being that we did not grow up very religious. Sure, we went to church every Sunday but we never said grace before a meal (unless you count Christmas with the relatives) and we never really talked about God at home. We never talked about praying or anything else. It is so awkward for me to talk religiously. Also, as much as Jim says he is religious he is not open about it either. Yes, we say grace at dinnertime but that is about it. So, I am taking it a week at a time and we will see how it goes. I am sure I will make it through the entire course as that is the type of person I am. One to stick it out. I paid for childcare and such so by golly I am going to do what I said I would do.
And more updates:
Caroline and Elizabeth got glasses. Not covered by insurance so we had to pay $896! Now that we have done that we will have eye insurance starting October 1st. We found out two days after we paid all this money. They do look cute in them. Smarter! :)
Zachary is still meeting with ECI. His speech has improved tremendously over the past 6 months. But he still has a ways to go. He has a little attitude though!
Tomorrow I go to the Women Of Faith Conference. I am looking forward to it. Although I am a bit nervous. Plus I have to get there at 7:30 AM to carpool. I hope it is good for me. I tried to distract Rebecca today by telling her that Daddy would be staying home from work tomrrow to play with her. I thought this would be an exciting thing for her. Instead she asked if I would be here to. When I told her no I had a meeting to go to with other mommy's from church she cried. She looked so incredibly sad. It broke my heart. She asked if she could go with me. I told her no. She said over and over that she wanted to be with me. So, I promised I would see if they had anything I could buy for her there so she would know that she was in my heart. Poor girl. :( She looked so sad.
On another note, I have been attending a bible study. It is called A Women's Heart, God's Dwelling Place by Beth Moore. I do not know yet what I think of it. This is so new for me. I know I hate missing the morning with my children. I miss them terribly during it. Especially when Zachary does not want to leave me and Rebecca gets crocodile tears begging me to just let us stay home. I also am not really good at understanding the bible. After doing my homework for the week I do not feel like I knew anymore then I did. Then I go to class and they explain what it means (sometimes) and I think wow, I never could have gotten that out of it. It makes me feel frustrated and clueless. I am trying hard to be a better christian and get closer to God. Why? I do not know. Maybe because I see others who have and it looks good. It is hard though being that we did not grow up very religious. Sure, we went to church every Sunday but we never said grace before a meal (unless you count Christmas with the relatives) and we never really talked about God at home. We never talked about praying or anything else. It is so awkward for me to talk religiously. Also, as much as Jim says he is religious he is not open about it either. Yes, we say grace at dinnertime but that is about it. So, I am taking it a week at a time and we will see how it goes. I am sure I will make it through the entire course as that is the type of person I am. One to stick it out. I paid for childcare and such so by golly I am going to do what I said I would do.
And more updates:
Caroline and Elizabeth got glasses. Not covered by insurance so we had to pay $896! Now that we have done that we will have eye insurance starting October 1st. We found out two days after we paid all this money. They do look cute in them. Smarter! :)
Zachary is still meeting with ECI. His speech has improved tremendously over the past 6 months. But he still has a ways to go. He has a little attitude though!
Tomorrow I go to the Women Of Faith Conference. I am looking forward to it. Although I am a bit nervous. Plus I have to get there at 7:30 AM to carpool. I hope it is good for me. I tried to distract Rebecca today by telling her that Daddy would be staying home from work tomrrow to play with her. I thought this would be an exciting thing for her. Instead she asked if I would be here to. When I told her no I had a meeting to go to with other mommy's from church she cried. She looked so incredibly sad. It broke my heart. She asked if she could go with me. I told her no. She said over and over that she wanted to be with me. So, I promised I would see if they had anything I could buy for her there so she would know that she was in my heart. Poor girl. :( She looked so sad.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
She did it! and other weekend news
Rebecca finally made it through the reading page she had been stuck on. We finally had school Friday. So I took a little different approach to the page. We did it backwards. And we finally made it. I had to remind her a few times to look at the word she was reading, all of the letters in it instead of seeing the first letter and just saying any word that started with that letter. She was so excited to finally be able to move on. She got to read two new stories. One little short story and another book. So she earns two more stars!
We also worked on States and capitals. We reviewed the ones we have already studied and learned a new one. She loves learning the states. For math she did a few workbook pages that required her to count objects and write how many. Very easy for her but at least required her to practice writing her numbers. She is doing so good and although it requires her to miss her nap as I have found school works so much better while Zachary is napping for the most part, it is nice to have that one on one time with her.
Yesterday (Monday, a holiday) we did an impromptu math activity. It was a pocket chart activity where she had to match up the number, letter word for the number, and objects that equaled that number. We let Zachary find the object part while she did the number and word. I was pleased to see she recognized many of the number words. Maybe it was just lucky guesses but she did so well. I have been wanting to start addition with her and have so many activities running through my mind for that but I did not want to jump ahead and skip all the other stuff. It is so easy to do that with Rebecca because she can grasp so many concepts. She is so eager to learn some of it as well so you hate to continue doing the stuff that she already can do. But I do want to make sure she has a solid foundation before moving on and that means she needs to be able to write all her numbers and read number words.
I love doing school with her and wish I could devote more time to planning it out. Hopefully when the house is more organized I can.
As for this weekend.... It was a long weekend. No school or work on Monday. The girls spent the night at Audrey's on Friday. The two younger ones and Jim and I went to Katy Mills on Saturday. We were hoping to go swimming with our neighbors but decided not to when we woke up and it was rainy and overcast. We had plans to go out to a fancy dinner with friends that night and I really did not have a decent dress to wear so it gave us the opportunity to look at the mall for something and Jim needed to find some black shorts for band reunion. I did find a new dress, actually three! And Jim did get a new pair of shorts. So, it was a successful trip in that regards. We then decided to have lunch at Johnny Rockets at the mall. Both kids had been begging for food. Well, their attitudes changed once we were there. Rebecca kept whining. They both refused to eat so we decided to skip the play area and head home. They both needed to take a nap before our night out anyway.
As for our night out..... Our friend Rick turned 50 on Sunday. His wife gave him a cool present for his birthday. He was a Chef For The Day at a really nice restaurant called Brennan's. He went there in the morning and got to cook along side of the executive chef. He learned all about the different areas of the kitchen and cooked a little of everything. Then he also had to go up to their wine "cellar" and taste test all the wines and choose one for us to have. Then he, his wife, us, and another couple got to eat there. We had a special table right in the kitchen. We were able to see all that was going on in the kitchen and we were able to get up and walk around the kitchen as well to see what they were doing. We had a six course meal. The way they served it each couple had two different items from the menu so we were able to sample more then just what we had for 6 courses! Yum! I was a bit nervous as I am so much a fussy eater. I like plain and simple. But I did good! I made Jim proud!
We started with champagne. I actually like it okay. Then we tried a white wine and then a red wine. Then we had soup. I had Turtle Soup and Jim had gazpacho. I LOVED the turtle soup. It was delicious. The gazpacho was a tomato and cucumber with some scallops on the center. I liked it okay but was not a fan of cold soup. Needless to say I did not share much of my turtle soup with Jim! Then came the salad portion. I got some type of shrimp with some kind of sauce. (Do not expect real names here as I have no clue and do not remember.) I quickly traded Jim (no shrimp for me) and took his greens with grape tomatoes. Then we moved on to a seafood dish. I got groupie ( I had never had this before, and it was actually not too bad) with crab meat and mushrooms in some type of sauce. Jim got a crab cake with special green stuff on top. The crab cake was good as well. After the fish we had a meat dish. I got lamb with a special corn muffin and some type of cooked greens (can't remember). It was very good! Jim got veal and some delicious potatoes with some really good sauce on them. After the meat we had a cheese plate. We were given a wedge of three different cheeses with three slices of bread and some honey with the honey comb in the middle of it all. The honeycomb was to chew on to cleanse your pallet between cheeses. The first cheese was a blue cheese, a very strong blue cheese. It was okay. A little too strong for me. The second was a creme bere (sp) which was sooo rich. It was good but actually got too sweet after a few bites. The third I can not remember what it was but it was my favorite. It was a hard cheese. After that we had dessert. And all I can say is WOW!!! We had 11 different desserts to try. They were fabulous!
It was such a great night. good friends, great food. We all drove in one car too which was nice. All the kids were at one house and Caroline, Elizabeth, and Audrey babysat for us. They had pizza! It was a wonderful and fun experience!
Back to the long weekend....
Sunday was church and HEB. Then I called my mother to wish her a happy birthday! I still need to send her her gift. Sunday night Jim made jambalaya for dinner and the girls went out to a friends house again. Monday, we did a little yard work while the kids played outside with Morgan. Then we went swimming with our neighbors. We had to come home when it started thundering. Rebeca and Morgan watched a movie at our house while I chatted with the neighbors and watched the storm go through. I love that particular neighbor. Their whole family is great!!! Then that evening we met up with the Brimberry's for dinner at Skeeters. We had a good time with them as well! So, we had a good weekend filled with friends!
Now back to unpacking the house!!
We also worked on States and capitals. We reviewed the ones we have already studied and learned a new one. She loves learning the states. For math she did a few workbook pages that required her to count objects and write how many. Very easy for her but at least required her to practice writing her numbers. She is doing so good and although it requires her to miss her nap as I have found school works so much better while Zachary is napping for the most part, it is nice to have that one on one time with her.
Yesterday (Monday, a holiday) we did an impromptu math activity. It was a pocket chart activity where she had to match up the number, letter word for the number, and objects that equaled that number. We let Zachary find the object part while she did the number and word. I was pleased to see she recognized many of the number words. Maybe it was just lucky guesses but she did so well. I have been wanting to start addition with her and have so many activities running through my mind for that but I did not want to jump ahead and skip all the other stuff. It is so easy to do that with Rebecca because she can grasp so many concepts. She is so eager to learn some of it as well so you hate to continue doing the stuff that she already can do. But I do want to make sure she has a solid foundation before moving on and that means she needs to be able to write all her numbers and read number words.
I love doing school with her and wish I could devote more time to planning it out. Hopefully when the house is more organized I can.
As for this weekend.... It was a long weekend. No school or work on Monday. The girls spent the night at Audrey's on Friday. The two younger ones and Jim and I went to Katy Mills on Saturday. We were hoping to go swimming with our neighbors but decided not to when we woke up and it was rainy and overcast. We had plans to go out to a fancy dinner with friends that night and I really did not have a decent dress to wear so it gave us the opportunity to look at the mall for something and Jim needed to find some black shorts for band reunion. I did find a new dress, actually three! And Jim did get a new pair of shorts. So, it was a successful trip in that regards. We then decided to have lunch at Johnny Rockets at the mall. Both kids had been begging for food. Well, their attitudes changed once we were there. Rebecca kept whining. They both refused to eat so we decided to skip the play area and head home. They both needed to take a nap before our night out anyway.
As for our night out..... Our friend Rick turned 50 on Sunday. His wife gave him a cool present for his birthday. He was a Chef For The Day at a really nice restaurant called Brennan's. He went there in the morning and got to cook along side of the executive chef. He learned all about the different areas of the kitchen and cooked a little of everything. Then he also had to go up to their wine "cellar" and taste test all the wines and choose one for us to have. Then he, his wife, us, and another couple got to eat there. We had a special table right in the kitchen. We were able to see all that was going on in the kitchen and we were able to get up and walk around the kitchen as well to see what they were doing. We had a six course meal. The way they served it each couple had two different items from the menu so we were able to sample more then just what we had for 6 courses! Yum! I was a bit nervous as I am so much a fussy eater. I like plain and simple. But I did good! I made Jim proud!
We started with champagne. I actually like it okay. Then we tried a white wine and then a red wine. Then we had soup. I had Turtle Soup and Jim had gazpacho. I LOVED the turtle soup. It was delicious. The gazpacho was a tomato and cucumber with some scallops on the center. I liked it okay but was not a fan of cold soup. Needless to say I did not share much of my turtle soup with Jim! Then came the salad portion. I got some type of shrimp with some kind of sauce. (Do not expect real names here as I have no clue and do not remember.) I quickly traded Jim (no shrimp for me) and took his greens with grape tomatoes. Then we moved on to a seafood dish. I got groupie ( I had never had this before, and it was actually not too bad) with crab meat and mushrooms in some type of sauce. Jim got a crab cake with special green stuff on top. The crab cake was good as well. After the fish we had a meat dish. I got lamb with a special corn muffin and some type of cooked greens (can't remember). It was very good! Jim got veal and some delicious potatoes with some really good sauce on them. After the meat we had a cheese plate. We were given a wedge of three different cheeses with three slices of bread and some honey with the honey comb in the middle of it all. The honeycomb was to chew on to cleanse your pallet between cheeses. The first cheese was a blue cheese, a very strong blue cheese. It was okay. A little too strong for me. The second was a creme bere (sp) which was sooo rich. It was good but actually got too sweet after a few bites. The third I can not remember what it was but it was my favorite. It was a hard cheese. After that we had dessert. And all I can say is WOW!!! We had 11 different desserts to try. They were fabulous!
It was such a great night. good friends, great food. We all drove in one car too which was nice. All the kids were at one house and Caroline, Elizabeth, and Audrey babysat for us. They had pizza! It was a wonderful and fun experience!
Back to the long weekend....
Sunday was church and HEB. Then I called my mother to wish her a happy birthday! I still need to send her her gift. Sunday night Jim made jambalaya for dinner and the girls went out to a friends house again. Monday, we did a little yard work while the kids played outside with Morgan. Then we went swimming with our neighbors. We had to come home when it started thundering. Rebeca and Morgan watched a movie at our house while I chatted with the neighbors and watched the storm go through. I love that particular neighbor. Their whole family is great!!! Then that evening we met up with the Brimberry's for dinner at Skeeters. We had a good time with them as well! So, we had a good weekend filled with friends!
Now back to unpacking the house!!
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