Beanie Baby Birthday Bash

 Brooklyn came home from school on Monday and told me that her beanie baby Herald, who she adopted for a class project, had a birthday coming up on January 7th.

We decided to have a little birthday party for her(Brooklyn decided that Herald was a her). When she checked the birth dates of her other two beanies she saw that they both had birthdays in December, so we made it a triple birthday party!

Meet the Birthday Beanies: SnoCap, Scoops and Herald.

I made a birthday garland for the beanies' party.

I call it the Confetti Garland and it will be making appearances at all our family parties from now on.

Here is Brooklyn with the birthday beanies and their friends from Toy Story.

It was quite a crowd!

Yep. We lit the candles...and sang.

Brooklyn helped them blow out the candles.

She was the happiest girl in the world that night.

She kept saying how it was the "Best day EVER!"

Oh, the things we do for our children;)

Growing up.

I think I may be turning into a grown up. Gasp! My sister Fish and I talk about feeling like we are still teenagers who are pretending to be adults...that we are in essence still "playing house" and that one day we will actually feel like grown ups. Well, I have made some changes lately that have come so naturally that it scares me a little, and I think I may just be growing up......a little.

I want to be a morning person!

I want to be more of a morning person, and amazingly enough I think it may already be happening. Lately I am exhausted by 9:30p.m. When I go to bed that early I get great sleep and wake up much earlier and with greater energy. When I get up early...and by that I mean between 6 and 7...I put the coffee on, do a few small chores while I am waiting, pour my coffee and go out to my deck where I sit in my red adirondack chair, read my Bible and write in my journal. I watch all my animals play at my feet and usually have one or two of them laying on my baby belly while the baby tries to kick them. When I finish reading I wake Brooklyn up, water the garden and fruit trees and remind Brook to feed the the kittens, the dogs, the guinea pigs and the fish. Then we walk out to feed the chickens and check on the ducks and the goat. I have noticed that the days that start this way are some of the best days and I want every day to be like this.

I want a minivan so bad!

If my younger self heard me say that she would time travel and drop kick me. Seriously. I am on the lookout as I type this. They are SO much more convenient than a sedan or a truck for hauling kids around to school, soccer, swimming lessons, etc. When I get one, I plan to put a bumper sticker on it that tells everyone around me that I am a soccer mom and also that my child is an honor student.

Approved!!!

Thanks for all the prayers friends! I got a call yesterday from AIM and found out that they had approved me....Yay!!! Before I can get an effective date though we need to pay in full the remaining balance from our miscarriage last year. It took me almost a year to get them to cancel my coverage and find out that even though we discovered a miscarriage on the FIRST day of my coverage we were going to have to pay the entire coverage fee. Grrrr! Now they have changed the policy so that if you miscarry in the first trimester you only pay one third of the premium.

So that is what we are waiting on now......for us to come up with an extra 650 dollars so that we can pay for our miscarriage and THEN I can go see a doctor about this baby.

Please be praying that God will provide that money for us.

Evil snack lady

Yep, that's me! That's how I feel right now.

Today was my turn to bring snack for Brooklyn's soccer team. I have been back to first trimester all-day sickness for over a week now and was praying all day that the rain would continue so our game would get cancelled and I could just sleep. No such luck. I got up and washed and cut up apples for the 8 kids on our team as well as a few extras for siblings and put them into individual baggies for the half-time snack and then I packed juice boxes and fruit by the foots for after the game. Brook and I got there early and I carried the cooler and my camp chair across the field to where our game was going to be and got set up(Jon was on an appointment and was going to meet us there).

Half time. I pull out my hand sanitizer wipes for the kids to clean their hands before snack and then reach for the bags of apple slices to pass out. I hear someone say "Come get your snacks" and see the kids line up at another parent who is passing out gogurts. What?!?!?!? I was really confused and I asked why he had snacks because it was my day....okay so "asked" may not be the right term. I'm pregnant and sick and reluctantly fulfilled my obligation and someone else shows up with tubes of yogurt....I probably came off a little aggressive. The coach said that someone would have to bring snacks for Monday and I said that it wouldn't be me; today was my scheduled day and I brought it.

After the game the coach tells me that she saw the dad wipe a tear from his eye. Now I don't really know how much of that is true and how much was the coach teasing me, but I felt really really bad at this point. Then I felt mad that I felt bad about it. IT WAS MY TURN TO BRING SNACK! How hard is it to look at a schedule and know when your date is? So then I get in the car and just start bawling. Now this man and who knows who else thinks that I am just an evil raging snack freak. Great.

That is not a parking spot.

Getting Brooklyn up and ready for school while I am nauseous and exhausted proves to be a challenge sometimes, so I usually am still in my pj's with crazy hair and yesterdays make-up smeared under my eyes when I take her in the mornings. There is a drive through drop off area for us parents who can't (or shouldn't) get out of the car to walk their child to the classroom. A few weeks ago I was running a few minutes late to drop her off and I was a mess that morning. I pulled up behind a minivan which was parked at the very front of the drive through (which is next to the entrance of the preschool) and waited for them to pull forward. It didn't move. I waited some more. It still didn't move. Then I realized that there was a small child in there, but no parent. I looked over at the preschool window where I saw three adults standing at the window chatting, so I honked to remind them that this was not a parking spot. Well, they turned and looked at me like I was driving the wrong way on the highway. Grrrrr! I backed up my car, drove to the exit of the drive through and backed in so that I could drop off my daughter and watch her walk into her classroom before I drove home to rest. The whole day I was so irritated by this person who thought that they were entitled to park in the drop off zone instead of in a parking spot only a few yards away. I mean, it would be like parking in the Starbucks drive through and going inside! Seriously?!?!?I am such a rule follower that it just bothers me when other people blatantly disobey the rules. I'm a first born if you can't tell:)

I talked to Brooklyn's teacher about the preschool mom using that as her personal parking lot and she said she would talk to the preschool teachers because they were not supposed to allow that.

Well today I pull up and see that same minivan sitting there, so I pulled up right behind it and waited a minute for them to see me and then I decided to call the office. Yes, I was going to tattle....She started it though. As the phone was ringing the woman in the minivan poked her head up and looked at me through her side mirror, gave me a dirty look and then pulled out of the drive through and parked in a parking spot. Victory!!!