day 3

Today I am thankful for my mom. She has taught me you can accomplish anything you put your mind to. Her strength and courage even when life gets REALLY hard is amazing to see. She is alwyas there for my family and I don't know what we would do without her.

18 years

Today is hitting me extra hard this year. It was hitting me hard yesterday too in fact. I got on facebook yesterday, and one of the first things I saw was this picture my cousin had uploaded.

I instantly teared up thinking about those two amazing men that left our family much too soon. The one on the right is my dad, and the other is my uncle, my dad's brother, who was the closest thing I had to a dad after my father passed away. My uncle died in 2007 just 3 days after Megan was born. He never even got to meet her. The day he was planning to come visit us and meet her was the day he passed away of a sudden heart attack. His daughter, the cousin that posted the picture, and I have always been close. Somehow she knew I needed a little pick me up already, and a reminder that they are always with us.
The past few years this anniversary has made me sad, but not really affected me the way it is this year. I have no idea why I am having such a hard time this year. I feel like I need to walk around with a warning label on my forehead that I could burst into tears at any moment. It's a little ridiculous, and it makes me feel stupid. I wish I could talk to Sean about how I am feeling, but I just don't think he can relate, and he definitely doesn't know what to say to be comforting. I can't really blame him though. How on earth would he know what to say or do to help when a) he's never lost a parent, and b) he's not an emotionally connected person.
Any suggestions on how to handle feeling like this? I don't want to upset my kids because I'm upset. Also, any suggestions on broaching the topic with Sean? I want to be able to talk to him about this, but don't really know how to approach it, and I don't know what to tell him I need from him to help me. Granted, sometimes all I need is a hug, but I'm sure he could use some helpful tips on other ideas when I'm having a rough day.

Day 2

Today I am thankful for my amazing kids. They can frustrate me like nothing else, and bring a smile to my face like nothing else, and sometimes do both at the same time. They truly are amazing gifts I have been given.

day 1

I decided this year I wanted to do the 24 days of thanksgiving, and then forgot to post day 1about yesterday. Oops, lol! So here is day 1; I am thankful for a God who is always loving and willing to forgive, no matter how many times I stumble in trying to walk His path in life.

who's training who?

So, I had planned this post in my head today, and then this evening, something amazing happened that made me totally rethink what I had planned to say. 
The original post was something like this;
I have been working on getting Jackson to use the potty for the last month.  It has been a difficult journey because he's a very stubborn kid, and I could barely even get him to sit on the potty, let alone use the darn thing for a long time.  I tried every bribe I could think of to get him to sit on it to see it wasn't really scary like he tried to make me believe it was, but as with everything in Jackson's world, we had to wait for him to do it in his own time.  He finally made it past being afraid of the potty, but was still very reluctant to use it.  For a couple weeks I cleaned up a lot of puddles, but I decided to stick with it, but also not be a Hitler about it.  I would offer at certain times (when he got up, before and after meals, before and after naps, etc.), and if he would try that was great, and if not, that was ok too.  I know the experts would say the laid back approach is all wrong, but with Jackson, pressing the issue just wasn't going to work, and backing off completely would have meant he would go to kindergarten in diapers.
So, little by little, Jackson has gotten to the point that he has not worn any diapers, or had any accidents in the past week, but we have a problem.  He never tells me when he needs to potty, he just waits around, and stays dry, until I take him at those normal times.  He even stays dry overnight, which is a long time, but I just can't get him to ever tell me he needs to potty.
Here is the crazy thing; I was going to ask if I should just keep doing what we are doing, or if I need to do something differently to get him to the point that he tells me, but this afternoon, Jackson came upstairs, went into the bathroom, and took himself potty.  I heard him in there and asked what he was doing and he told me "I'm going poop!"  Boy, was I excited.  I know that is the craziest thing to be excited about, but I was really stressing that I had done something wrong and that Jackson wasn't really potty trained.  I felt like I had just trained myself to take him potty and he didn't really get it.  Thank the Lord that things seem to be changing.  Fingers crossed this trend continues with Jackson and I will only have one more kid to get through potty training. 

thank God for moms!

The last month has been crazy around here.  Sean has been out of town for two weeks for work, and even though my mom was around to help a ton, I still felt like they were the longest weeks of my life.  Brooklyn had an ear infection during Sean's first trip, which meant very little sleep the first couple of days until her meds kicked in.  His first trip was also just over a week after my surgery, so that made things interesting.  Thankfully I was making an awesome recovery, so I wasn't feeling too bad by the time he left.  His second trip was better since we were all well, but I had meetings somewhere for the kids almost every night that week, so my poor mother was at my house almost more than she was at hers.  Thank God we have her around!  I don't know what we'd do without her.  Not only would I be a lot crazier, we would probably be totally broke from paying for babysitting all these times that I have had stuff to do that the kids couldn't attend.  She has been driving up to our house at least twice a week to help us out for the past couple of weeks, and unfortunately things don't look like they are going to slow down anytime soon.  I am hopeful we'll be cutting her hours back to one day a week soon though, lol!

In other news, GO CARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

family calendar

The kids are getting older, which means more and more activities are filling up our calendar.  Our small dry erase calendar just isn't cutting it anymore.  I can't fit all the things in on some of the days because it seems like everyone is going in a different direction.  I decided it was time to buy a bigger more organized calendar to keep up with everything that is going on.  I considered trying to make my own so it could be totally customized for our needs, but I decided to give one of these pre-made designs a shot for this year. I was torn between this calendar

and this one

Ultimately, I decided to go with the first one because I like being able to see our plans a month at a time, instead of by the week.  I have a feeling in a couple years I'm going to need the second type of calendar as we add more and more to our family schedule, but for now I'm hoping the calendar I chose works out for us. 
What kind of family calendar does everyone else use?  What do you love and hate about it?