November 6, 2011

Tyson has been gone the last few days visiting a family friend and every time he is out of town, even just for one night, I wonder how single mothers do it. We all miss him when he is gone and our family rhythm gets disrupted. I have come to realize that he helps me restore my patience at the end of the day by breathing fresh perspective onto things. I find it very hard to recharge without him here. I have also come to realize that my boys need some rough-and-tumble play with their daddy that I am just not capable of duplicating, no matter how I try. I think we are all itching to have him back this evening and get back to our normal routines.

November 5, 2011

Today we were driving home from spending the night at my mom's house. The boys had watched the Disney movie Aristocats, and we were talking about why the butler wanted to get rid of the cats. I told them it was because he thought that getting the money from the old lady was so important. Landon said, "But money isn't the most important thing, is it, Mom?" I told him no, that other things were much more important. I asked what he thought some of those things might be. He answered without hesitation, "Kids. Kids are more important than money." I added that all our friends and family were more important than money. I'm so glad that they know these things.

November 3, 2011

Today, Tyson left at 5 a.m. to go out of town until Sunday.

This morning I watched Gretchen's sweet baby James for a couple hours because her usual babysitter was sick. The boys were fantastic with him.

After he was gone, the boys and I walked the dog in the middle of the day. I usually walk him alone, after dinner.

The walk caused me to miss my midwife appointment and we had to reschedule it for after dinner. We rarely schedule things for after dinner because they boys usually go to bed right after dinner.

On the walk, Coleson fell asleep in the stroller and napped for the first time in weeks and weeks.

When he woke up, I did yard work, which is usually Tyson's responsibility. My pregnant body resented it a bit.

After dinner, and the subsequent rescheduled midwife appointment, I was responsible for putting the boys to bed. That's something else Tyson usually does. I fell asleep with them for a while.

Everything about today was a little off.

Not all of it was bad, but it made for a strange day.

November 2, 2011

One of the boys' favorite things to do is go four wheeling. Luckily, we have two sets of grandparents with four wheelers who don't mind sharing with us. And one of those sets also has a lovely lake cabin at which to enjoy them. A few weeks ago, we spent a wonderful weekend at the lake and the boys got in lots of four wheeling time. I got in a lot of knitting, but that can be it's own post. My dad and step-mom took the boys out quite a bit on those four wheelers, and they had a fantastic time!

And when returning from a morning ride, what's better than hot chocolate with marshmallows?

Not much. Not much, at all.

November 1, 2011 - NaBloPoMo

I have decided to do NaBloPoMo again this year, as I seem to enjoy it every year and it sure is fun to look back on my old entries. Courtney encouraged me to do it, so here we are!

Yesterday was Halloween, although the celebration started for us on Friday when Tyson's company hosted a trick-or-treat party in their office. The boys love visiting daddy's work, and the fact that they got candy this time too was a big hit.

Each of the boys also got to have pajama day at school to celebrate Halloween. They both wanted to wear their costumes instead, but were easily convinced to wear their pajamas in order to get to go to the party at school with their friends.

Last night we went trick-or-treating with our friends, followed with a little more in our own neighborhood. Captain America and the dinosaur (sweet costume made by my mom!) had a great time!

After all the festivities were over last night, they boys dumped their candy out on the table, chose their seven favorite pieces (one piece a day for a week), and packaged the rest up to leave out for the candy fairy. She visits our house every year on Halloween and exchanges candy for a toy or game. The boys love it, and they are always excited to see what she brings!

They fell asleep almost instantly after a late, fun night and this morning they awoke to surprises from the candy fairy. Landon got a new Wii game and Coleson got a construction trucks set. Everyone was happy, and now instead of a huge bag of candy to fight over every hour for a month, we have one very small bowl and a piece of candy to eat every day at quiet time for a week. Much nicer.

All-in-all, a successful Halloween! And now the holidays are upon us. Oh my.

October 22, 2011

After spending a good chunk of yesterday evening backing up all our pictures onto our external hard drive, and deleting them off my laptop to make room for more, I have a completely irrational fear that they are gone forever. I have no reason to believe they are not all safe on the hard drive, waiting for me to access them whenever I choose, especially since I triple checked that they all survived the move. But, moving things like that from one electronic home to another kind of make me nervous. I mean, what if I lost ALL OUR PICTURES from the time Landon was a baby until now? Nerve wracking, I tell you. Luckily, when I do go to access them, I find sweet gems like these from just a couple months ago that are sitting there waiting for me. Thank goodness.

October 21, 2011

Hello, blog. It's been a long time. I have been thinking a lot lately about blogging and how to be "good" at it. I want to have one of those lovely blogs where there are great pictures and moving prose (that possibly eventually earns me a book contract, you know), but I just don't know if I can pull that off and the expectation stops me from writing anything at all. But, I have decided to do NaBloPoMo again this year, and I really would like, at least for the next month or so, to have this be a neat space with decent pictures and maybe something vaguely intelligent to say. So, here we go. I am spending the evening making room on my hard drive to upload a couple hundred pictures from the last few months and browsing some of my favorite blogs for inspiration. Maybe this time I will stick with it for more than a month or so. A book contract would be nice, after all.