Thankful day 7 - my parents

My parents are two of the most amazing people I know. I'm sure that everyone says that, but in this instance it's true. I have so many wonderful memories of childhood because my parents made us a priority in their lives. I can never even begin to repay them for all they have taught me, done for me and the example they have been, I can only hope that I am half the parent to my children that they were to me.

(Disclaimer: I actually wrote this back when I was doing my "thankful" posts, but didn't ever finish it. I saw it in my "drafts" so I decided to post it now, finished or not.)

Thankful day 6 - Rain

Today I am thankful for rain. I usually am not a fan of rain...at least not the rain we get around here. It is a cold, winter rain. We don't get warm summer rain around here, it is just dry as a desert until it starts to turn cold and then it rains for months on end. I would much prefer snow when it is cold because it is fun to play in and makes everything so pretty. I miss snow, but that is beside the point. I am thankful for rain today because it allowed me to hear the sweet innocence and giggles of my two youngest as they unabashedly danced in the rain.

Thankful day 5 - my sisters

Today I am thankful for my sisters. How many people will be in my corner no matter what life may bring my way? I have two sisters, one older and one younger and we are all very different. We had our share of sibling rivalry, but you better believe that no one was allowed to disparage either one of them around me. As the years have gone on we have each traveled very different paths, but I love them with all of my heart and know that as time goes on I can count on them whenever I need them, and I hope they know that I would do the same for them in a heartbeat. I love you TyRee and Brandee…I’m lucky to call you my sisters.

Thankful day 4 - Friends

Today I am thankful for friends. I had the opportunity to wake up at an unearthly hour, drag my two youngest out of bed and to drive 45 minutes away to go out to breakfast with a dear friend and take her to the airport. She lives in Arizona but was in town (a few towns away) for a business meeting and needed a ride to the airport. She is one of my best friends (we met in college) and years have gone by in between when we have had the opportunity to see each but every time we do it is like no time has passed at all. I don’t have a lot of friends (outside of my family) but the ones that I do have are all like that and they mean the world to me. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do for them and I know the feeling is reciprocated. So, today I am thankful for those friendships that will last the test of time, you are dearly loved.

Thankful Day 3 - Devyn

I know this is a little redundant, but today I couldn't not post about being thankful for Devyn. No, I am not more thankful for her than my other children, but today is her birthday. She is 4 years old today and as precocious as ever. She is sweet and thoughtful and so willing to share, but then there is the other side of her. She is by far my most difficult child right now. She throws tantrums at the drop of a hat, but even with all of that you can't help but love her. She has the cutest giggle and is so fun. So today I am thankful for being blessed with having Devyn in our lives. I can't imagine life without her.

Thankful Day 2 - my husband

I saw this "sign" on Pinterest today so I decided it would be perfect for my Thankful post for the day. This is my husband! He is constantly telling me how beautiful I am and that I am pretty without make-up. He tells me he is lucky to call me his wife but I think I am the lucky one. He does little things like bring me lunch or runs errands for me. He is a good father and I am blessed to call him mine. I love him with all of my heart and am thankful that I am lucky enough to have had him enter my life, not once, but twice and I don't plan on ever letting him go.

November - Thankful day 1 - my children

November is my absolute favorite month of the year. Call me narcissistic but I think a lot of it stems from the fact that I was born in November so my early memories of this month just radiate happiness to me. My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, also in November. My husband gives me a hard time that my favorite holiday is one that revolves around gluttony, and yes a full-fledged turkey dinner is my all-time favorite, but I think it has more to do with the warmth and coziness and being surrounded by family. I love the soft crunch of the fallen leaves beneath your feet, the crispness to the air, wearing sweaters and having more of an excuse to snuggle up with loved ones on the couch to keep warm. So, in honor of my favorite month and favorite holiday I want to focus on everything that I am thankful for. I have seen this done before and decided it is a wonderful idea. I am going to post one thing that I am thankful for everyday this month.

Deciding where to start is the hardest part for me. There are so many people and so many things that I have to be thankful for so choosing one of those to begin with is tricky, but I think I am going to start with my children. I have been blessed to have given birth to four children and each one of them holds a separate piece of my heart. I cannot express enough how much I love them and how grateful I am to have each of them as a part of my life. I learn and grow from them, I experience the greatest heartache and the greatest joy because of them and I am a better person for each one of them having entered into my life.

Define Necessity!

I saw this picture on Facebook a few days ago and it has haunted me ever since. Every time I look at this picture it makes me cry, literally. How dare we as a human race let his happen! How can we just continue to fill our coffer more and more while there are others, children, who go to bed hungry every night? I will be the first to admit that I am right there with everyone else. Christmas has become more and more commercial, and as much as I try to remind my children (and myself for that matter) that the true reason we celebrate Christmas is to remember the birth of Christ, it just gets lost sometimes in all the shopping and decorating and things.

After I saw this picture I went home and talked to my husband about it and decided that we are going to rethink Christmas this year. (He is all for slimming down Christmas and not because of the money, but because he has been to and lived in multiple 3rd world countries.) One thing I did was look into the World Food Programme. It is the United Nations program to help fight hunger around the world. For just $50 you can feed a school child for a year! A YEAR, oftentimes for the price of just one gift under the tree.

So, that night we had a family meeting, showed this picture to the kids and told them that we have decided to take $50 from each of their "Christmas budgets" and give it to the World Food Programme in honor of them. My 13 year old took it the hardest, although she completely understands, but did tell us that it made her a little sad. We live in an affluent area where although I think her Christmases border on the lavish they pale in comparison to quite a few of her friends, so I get it. I see where she is coming from. But I also know in the long run she will feel the spirit in which this is meant. It is hopefully saving the life of another child in honor of her. Someday she will look back and it will mean something to her. She will have forgotten what she got from "Santa Clause" but she will remember this.

I sometime suffer from the feelings of "I can't change it all by myself," which is true I can't, but I can at least do something. There are plenty of opportunities to help others though out the year. I am hoping that I remember to take those opportunities. We don't have a lot of excess when you look at our "neighbors" but when you look at the world at-large we are truly and richly blessed. It is my goal to always remember that and to always try and make the life of someone else a little better in any way I can.

So, go and do something for your fellow man, whatever that might be. Just try and make someone else's day a little better, a little brighter then it was before you came along. You won't regret it, I promise!

(Oh and as a side note, I've seen people try and counter the whole Christmas thing being based around Christ with the fact that it is based on a pagan holiday. Yes I do realize that our Christmas is actually based on a pagan holiday, but I also know that it is the spirit that counts. Heavenly Father and Jesus understand when we are celebrating for the right reason (as long as we are). Christians back in the day just converted pagan holidays over to Christian holidays so as to make the transition/conversion for all those pesky pagans to Christianity easier. :-)

Pillows

I am in LOVE with these throw pillows:






But of course I have no idea where to find them. Just got this email in my inbox that included this picture and now I NEED them ;-). If anyone sees anything like these in your travels would you be so kind as to let me know where...I would really appreciate it.

Track

Ari is in Jr. High this year and has been taking full advantage of their sports program (which I love.) It keeps her active and out of trouble, what more could I want?

At her school any 7th or 8th grader that wants to participate in sports gets to...no try outs, so she has gotten to try any sport that she wants. It means that their teams don't do so well against the other schools typically, but hey, like I said she's learning what sports she likes and wants to participate in and staying out of trouble at the same time.

So far she has played basketball and soccer and now track. She refused to do cross country in the fall (she has no endurance and has no desire to change that...ha ha ha) and she went to two days of volleyball and decided it wasn't for her. Although they have intermural sports at lunch and I guess she has done pretty well so a few of the players from the team this year have asked her to play next year so we'll see.

With so many kids on each team it means that often playing time is short, but luckily for Ari she is on the tall side so she played pretty often in basketball and played center (which she didn't really like, but loved the extra playing time.)

For soccer the coach was up front that he would play the better players more often which I didn't think was really fair, but it worked out for Ari because she's been playing soccer for years and is pretty good.

Track just started last week and on Thursday she was invited to run in a high school invitational meet, with schools coming from all over the area (a ton of them from the Bay Area). She was excited about that and I didn't realize what an honor it was until we got there and from her team of 135 kids only 20 were invited to this meet. They only had four races for the Jr. High kids, a girls and then a boys 800 (too long for Ari) and a 200 for boys and then girls. Ari says her best race is the 100m (nice and short so she can just run all out and be done, so for the invitational she ran the 200m. She came in 5th which isn't to bad considering she had only been to three track practices in her life at that point. I find that now that I have two little ones I don't take as many pictures of Ari's events because I'm taking care of one child while Ken is taking care of the other one, so I only got a couple picture at her meet last Friday, but her first meet against other schools in the area is this Thursday so maybe I'll get some more pictures.

9 Months Old

I am a terrible blogger, but I took a few pictures of Kai on Sunday because it was his 9 month birthday so I thought I would post a few. It is so hard for me to believe how big my little man is getting.

'Sesame Street' Teaches Self-Esteem

'Sesame Street' Teaches Self-Esteem

Have you seen this Sesame Street video (click on the above link to watch)? Oh how I wish this had been around when Ari was younger. I can't even count the number of times that Ari would tell me she wanted long, straight blond hair "like you mom." It would break my heart every time. I always tried to keep it healthy and do any number of cute things with her hair so that she would feel good in the hair that God gave her. Like it or not hair is a big part of most women's identity and self esteem and I wanted to give her a reason to be proud of her hair. She would have people all the time comment on how cute her hair was and just want to touch it and feel how soft it was. After years of this she would get so sick of random strangers asking to feel her hair, but I always had hopes that this attention would help her understand how beautiful her hair really is, but I'm not sure that it really made any difference. She's wanted to chemically straighten it for as long as I can remember and I have refused to let her. Being that she is biracial her hair is pretty unique. It is very soft but very curly. Her hair is thinner and finer than mine, but because of all the curl it looks big and frizzy if you don't do anything to it. It also does not grow! I mean of course it grows, but I can count on two hands the number of times she's had her hair trimmed in her entire life and yet it is still no longer than a few inches below her shoulders when it's soaking wet. This is not uncommon for black hair, but it doesn't change the fact that she has watched me cut all my hair off to donate to locks of love on two separate occasions and both times it's grown back longer than hers within a year’s time. Because her hair is unique and a combination of black and white hair I'm afraid that if I let her get her hair chemically straightened it will be too harsh on her hair and then it will all break off and because her hair grows so slowly she will have virtually no hair. I have toyed with the idea of letting her but knowing how unique her hair is I just don't know who to go to that will understand its complexities and not destroy her hair. When I got my first perm (way back in the 80s) I had waist length hair and the lady processed it too long and I had a bunch of my hair break off. I was 10 years old I think and wore my hair in pony tails quite often and would have little tufts of hair that stuck out for months that were trying to grow back from that little episode. Ari’s hair would literally take years to grow back if that happened.

We've had her hair braided a few times which she likes because it gives her the long hair that she doesn’t have to do much with everyday, but 1) it's ridiculously expensive ($100 and it lasts approx. 3 weeks) and 2) I’ve heard that it’s actually not that great for your hair because it puts too much strain on the hair follicle.

I love that this sesame street video encourages girls to love their hair just the way it is…but it’s a little late for Ari. She has already formed her opinion, along with the media’s help unfortunately on what is deemed attractive. I want Ari to see the Chris Rock movie Good Hair, but knowing how Chris Rock can be I’m afraid it might be a little crude for her so I need to watch it first and just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

If anyone has any great suggestions on both loving the hair that she has and any good stylists or products/procedures that would give her more manageable hair but won’t destroy it in the process I’m all ears.

(These are just some random pictures of Ari's hair. I used to do all kinds of "cute" things with it, but she is now in that awkward age where all girls are doing their own hair and think it looks really good. Yeah, I went through that phase and wonder why no one told me how bad my hair looked...ha ha ha. But really she usually just pulls it back in a pony tail so it's not so unruly.)

(I absolulety love these tight ringlets that it curls into when just the right amount of product is used...)

(The braids!)

For Ari

Chicks dig scars...and Dimples!

Every time Kai smiles and those dimples come out I tell him he has to be a nice boy and treat girls right...what girl can resist a smile like that?

New Man in My Life

I must confess that there is a new man in my life! Please don’t get me wrong, I love my husband with every fiber of my being, but there is just something that I can’t resist about my new love. I’m head-over-heels for him and have been meaning to introduce him to the blogging world for a few months now but have not gotten around to it yet. I think it has to do with my complete and total infatuation with him and that I cannot tear myself away from him.

Let me tell you a little about him. He has dark hair and an olive completion. He has a smile that melts my heart and when I hold him close he coos sweet nothings in my ear that would surely make any woman swoon. And to top it all off, he adores my girls, and they him. Believe it or not, my husband doesn’t even mind this affair of the heart; he’s pretty taken by him as well.

Meet Malakai (otherwise known as Kai), born July 17

(This is what I refer to as his victory pose, which he assumes quite often when getting his diaper changed)

Beach

Over Memorial Day weekend we drove over to the beach for something a little bit different. These are just a bunch of pictures that I took. The water was really cold (we live in NorCal so none of that warm San Diego ocean experience) so Devyn was more than happy to just stand on the sand and let the surf come up and wash over her feet. Ari was the only brave one in the bunch that would actually go out into the water.

(Showing me a mussel she found)

(This was so funny because in the above picture she's digging a hole in the sand and when she looked up at me the entire side of her face was covered in sand.)

(Just as a side note, a woman came up to me and commented on how cute and "appropriate" Ari's swimsuit was. She was very impressed as "appropriate" swimsuits are so hard to find anymore. I made sure to tell Ari because all of her friends wear tiny little bikinis and I wanted her to know that people do notice when she isn't showing everything off!

Just a bunch of pictures for those who care to see more pictures of my kids. We had a blast and will have to go back, but I will definitely be better about putting sun screen on. I put sunscreen on my face and arms, but was wearing capris so I didn't think to put it on my legs. I literally got one of the worst sunburns of my life, but only half way up my shins...not only does it look stupid, but now a week and a half later it is still red and sore...yikes!