Wonderful Weekend!

It was just wonderful! The weather was wonderful, the company was wonderful, getting work done & relaxing too was wonderful!

On Friday we took our 3rd child Daniel bowling for his birthday present. It was fun, he loves to bowl and he has this unusual curve ball that is scarily accurate. I got a strike and a spare in the second game, exciting for me, I'm not a big bowler. Even Bryan got a strike! He was so cute bowling. He carried his 6 lb ball up to the ramp everytime. Then after he would push the ball down the ramp he would throw up his arms & yell woohoo & then do a somersault, lol.

On Saturday I worked on more mowing & Travis worked on weed eating & such. Then we had the family birthday party for Daniel. My mom, Trav's parents, & my brother & family were there. We sat around & chatted & then went outside & enjoyed the nice day.

On Sunday we took things easier & moved at a slower pace. Travis & I went to our local small town & ate lunch. Then we walked around and checked out the cars at the car show. Picked up some ice cream & ate it on the way to pick up our oldest from a friend's house. Got home & Travis got the jeep running again & I mowed in between bouts of rain.

Other than a few spats with the kids it was a good, productive, family weekend. I look forward to many more like that!

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Seriously we've had enough! Our wells are full and our ground is saturated! We had plans to put up bub's new swingset next weekend and I'm not sure we're going to be able to. We wanted to do it on Memorial Weekend so my husband and whatever help we get would have 3 days to get it done or as close as possible. It's a big job and will take a long time. The way the weather has been though we haven't been able to even mow where we want to put it once this year. It needs to be mowed and leveled. We were hoping to do that before the weekend was here. We may get to mow it this Saturday if everything works out and from there it's wait and see and hope.

Beautiful Day

So beautiful that I had trouble deciding what to do with myself today. Should I clean up this mess in the house that's accumulated all week or go outside to do some overdue yard work? Or maybe I thought, I should just chuck all my responsibilities and just hang out and enjoy the comfortable, beautiful day? I opted for a combination of both in house cleaning & outside yard work. Now I'm cooking dinner, which I'm looking forward to for once, because we are having general tso's chicken and fried rice with egg rolls! This is a rare treat to make at home and even more rare to eat out in a restaurant. Hubby is taking a nap. Poor guy is tired and this weather is perfect napping weather. If I was tired I'd join him, but I'm not. In fact I'm sitting here with my feet jittering about b/c I have too much energy for sitting. Having this much energy is great for getting things done, but not for getting things done on the computer. At least half my life is on the computer so you can see how this gets in the way. It is good for my weight loss too. The clouds are turning a blue-gray shade implying that a storm is brewing. It's very pretty to look at, the tall grass is waving gently, you can hear the breeze, and smell the faint smell of water in the air. Unfortunately it also means my dog Ashley is outside pacing frantically. She's terrified of storms and tries to outrun them which means I have to chain her up before she does. So I'd better go catch her!

Swimming in chaos

I'm trying to keep my head above water, but sometimes I can feel myself about to be pulled under, overwhelmed by the wave that is my life. When I find myself feeling overwhelmed, I try to remind myself that many people live this way too and manage. That I, we, are very lucky for all we do have. I have to admit sometimes that is enough to push it back for a short period, but many times it's not much comfort. I have this cycle where I feel completely overwhelmed then after a meltdown, or a period of depression, I will psych myself up that things are going to be ok and that I can figure all this out. However, no matter how much I keep trudging through I find myself at the beginning of the cycle once again. I have so many "irons in the fire" as they say that I never really seem to get very far without giving up some thing like sleep or down time. I'm still trying to get through this schooling. I've bought a 4 month extension and I'm afraid I'll have to buy another one before I'm actually done. I'm trying to lose weight-still-which has been it's own cycle in itself. I have 4 kids. 3 teens with busy social lives & sports that has me doing a lot of running, spending a bunch of money, and trying to keep up on them & what's going on. I have a 2 yr old who is with me 24/7 who has speech delays. So besides the usual 2 yr old stuff we also have weekly speech appts, monthly counselor sessions, and a monthly play date to help his social growth. I can't seem to find time for losing weight, schooling, my kids, cleaning house, yard work, dogs, paying the bills, marriage time, and some free time. Now basketball season is coming in & the holidays and it's going to get crazier. My husband, god love him, has so many things of his own to do so I'm still left with most of this. My husband has work, lately he's been working tons of OT, and when he's not working he's got a list of home & car repairs to take care of, and of course try to spend sometime with the 4 kids and me and get his own free time. If I manage to get my weight loss workouts in then I don't get as much school time or cleaning in. If I work on school more then my workouts get skipped and my 2 yr old is more on his own & not getting what he needs from me. My teens help out quite a bit. They feed the animals, take care of the trash daily, help wash dishes, sweeping, laundry, babysitting the 2 yr old, cleaning their own bathroom & taking care of their own rooms and such. Even if I do figure out a somewhat decent schedule to get through all of it something always gets in the way. Appts, unexpected practices/games, holidays, a cranky 2 yr old going through changes, husband's schedule changing, issues with kids that have to be dealt with, unexpected changes in the schedule of visitation with their father and so on. We need me to work b/c right now we can only survive with what we have b/c of hubby's OT, without it we'd have to give up cell phones, cable and any thing fun at all for the family. Some where something has to give, but I can't decide what it should be: more income? weight loss? being involved with my kids? clean dishes & clothes? the kids give up their sports? what little couple married time we have? my relax time? none of that sounds like something I can or should give up. Well off to go swimming in the chaos again.

Life Changes: My goal

I started Life Changes journals a few years ago when I was trying to lose weight. I haven't stopped trying to lose weight, but I have stopped writing my life changes journals. Today I decided to start them up again. When I was writing those I seemed to stick to my goals more.

My goal right now is to walk 10,000 steps a day. Whether I work out or not I know if I walk 10,000 steps a day I'll be heading to a weight loss. In the course of a normal day without exercising and without trying to get in my steps I might only walk 2,000 steps. This is how I know getting 10,000/day in will get me in the right direction. I'm having a hard time getting up in the morning to exercise regularly right now. That's why I decided to just focus on the steps first. When I get that down then I'll add another goal.

Sports are my life

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EditThe soccer momby Richelle Fair on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 9:26am
You know that's the one sport my family doesn't have! no I'm not the soccer mom, but isn't that a common title for us stay-at-home moms with kids in sports? At least it's the only term I've ever heard for the mom of sports kids. I'm just a sports mom, too many different sports in our family to be called just one thing. We have cheerleading, basketball, football, cross country, baseball & track. I love that my kids are active and involved in sports. I love watching them play and participate. I love the pictures on my wall and talking to the other parents at the sports. What I don't love is how it seems to have taken over my life. I don't love the choking feeling of being ruled by practices, games, and the money they all need. As much as I love it all I hate that sometimes I feel trapped by the same sports. We rarely have anytime anymore that all 6 of us are even in the house together let alone spending any time together. There is some sporting thing going on every day of the week. Usually 2 or 3 a day really. I find myself getting so frustrated with the constant in and out of the house. The money that is spent on it, to the point where that is all of our "extra" money.This year Travis is coaching football so I've lost him 3 nights a week too on top of his OT. One night my oldest came home and asked me what was for dinner tomorrow night. I told him I didn't know yet. He then proceeded to tell me that I should fix spaghetti b/c it would be good for him for the race on Saturday. I told him no I wasn't fixing spaghetti just for that. He got a little upset saying his coach told him he should eat that. At that point I lost it. It was at the end of a busy week because of all these sports and I had just had enough. I started yelling that sports has taken over my life enough as it is. It dictates my days, weeks, free time and money and that it was not about to start dictating what I made for dinner! The truth was I could have fixed spaghetti, we had everything we needed for it, I was just in a bull head moment. I didn't want dinner to become all about the sports too. We all ready eat dinner all at separate times so figuring out what's for dinner is tough enough. Later, of course, I felt bad. Here's a typical week of sports for us:



Monday-CC 4:30-5:30, FB 6-8

Tuesday-CC-4:30-5:30, FB 6-8

Wed-4:30-5:30, Cheer 7-8:30

Thurs-4:30-5:30, FB 6-8, Cheer 8-9:15

Fri-4:30-5:30

Sat-Cc 9 or 10 am, FB 1 or 3 or 4pm

Sun-baseball practice



When basketball season starts, is the worst time around here. Then we have the boys with BB practice 5 nights a week-at different times, plus my daughter's cheer goes up to 3-4 times a week. Cheerleading is also at a different time b/c everyone is waiting for the gym. We even have two basketball gyms, but one is for the girls and one for the boys. Add in 1-2 games for both highschool and middle school and basketball is the most spoken word out of my mouth for months!



I know this is the point where people have told me to have the kids cut back on their sports. Obviously that's the answer to my problems over it, but it also takes away the joy I get from it. I don't want to take it away from the kids. Cheerleading is the only sport my daughter plays, it's the most expensive and does last almost an entire year minus 2 or 3 weeks, but it's her only sport. Tyler runs cross country, track, and plays basketball. Which one should he give up? My son Daniel plays football, basketball, and baseball. Again which one does he give up? He's a natural at football and baseball. This is his last year for football b/c our school doesn't have it, this is little league. Once it's gone though he's going to replace it with cross country, which would free up an extra practice 2 or 3 nights a week and a game each saturday. It would if my husband and I weren't going to volunteer to help out the football team even after Daniel is done. We want the school to add football to their programs and the only way to do that is to make the little league a success and they need volunteers to do that. We want to see football at our school at least by the time Bryan can play. Basketball is not Daniel's strong sport, but he loves it so much. He smiles the whole time he's on the floor, how can I take that away? Plus I know how important my sports were to me when I was a kid and they only have a few more years left. These are the reasons why I suffer through it all. After Daniel graduates highschool (in 6 short years) things will be slower and I know I'm going to miss watching my kids doing all of this. Sometimes right now though that seems VERY far away lol



I don't want the kids to give up their sports, sometimes though I just need to yell about it! lol

Great Weekend!

I have many things to be grateful for this Monday!



* a great weekend overall!
* My boys doing great at their sports this weekend and having fun doing it! Tyler ran 23:53 this weekend, he's shaved almost 2 minutes off his running time in the past few weeks! I know that isn't easy and I'm proud of him for working hard and achieving it! Daniel is playing much better football these past 2 weeks and you can see the joy and pride on his face now when he comes off the field. He has made a touchdown in each of the last two games. This Saturday he caught lobbed balls that are hard to catch, 1 turned into a touchdown and 1 he made while surrounded by the other team & he had to jump to catch it! His tackles have been great! BTW, the other team was the trojans, so you can imagine the jokes that come out of those games. Especially when the announcer says things like "No. 19 Daniel Montgomery brought down by a pack of trojans" LOL
* Great time with my parents visiting yesterday.
* My husband was able to fix my mom's truck without any hiccups and saved her a bunch of money.
* That my little man didn't turn into Oscar the Grouch yesterday when he had to go all day without a nap & that he slept through the night last night even though he fell asleep at 7pm yesterday evening!