No COMPUTER!!!

Oh my I have almost went crazy without the Internet and TV! No, its not a fast or anything along those lines but just a matter of us determining our "needs" or better yet our wants. Its been tough for me, no doubt. However, I have accomplished a lot more in an average day than what I normally would because there is no loss of half hour time increments from the TV or internet trapping me!

Well to catch up on this month, I decided that I wouldn't make a New Year's Resolution because I didn't think it mattered, I felt like 2009 was such a hard year so I had decided to just float on my back through 2010. Then, on the last day of the month, today, I watched a sermon on claiming your blessing and on Eichboh, meaning the "glory is gone." My glory isn't gone. I may have had a tough 2009 but I was still blessed and highly favored and rewarded with a gift from God, Miss Brinley Rae, our little angel. I have decided that I am going to go forward and run, not float through this upcoming year. I am going to do things with deliberation and know that MY God is in control and. HE will guide my steps, and I AM blessed because I'm still standing!

Going forth, I am proclaiming that we are blessed and highly favored. That the call of God won't take us where the Will of God can't protect us. So I am putting on my armor from God and preparing for war fare because I'm not going to be passive and set on the bench just because I had a set back in 2009.

I know that God has a plan and a purpose for our lives and I can already see him moving, since my new mindset. I have confidence that this year will be a year of growth and just because I don't like "growing pains", I am still thankful that I am not were I used to be but I'm not were I am going to be! SO here we go God I am letting go of my "buts" and going with you God!

Fantasies, Fallacies, and Fairy Tales...

Fantasies, Fallacies and Fairy Tells of the life of a stay at home mom!

So for some reason I had this idea or image of the "stay at home mom life." I thought it was all about working out at the gym, getting lattes, play dates and the glam life of the stay at home moms!

Oh how wrong I was, there are no fairies that magically clean your house, change butts, feed the kids, or help you even get a shower in peace without the kids opening the bathroom door half a dozen times and causing you to freeze half to death. The fallacy of illogical thinking was ever so present, when, I thought I would be back at the gym only a couple of weeks after having baby #3. On top of that what was I thinking? I wasn't trying to get three kids loaded and unloaded, dragging them kicking and screaming all the way to the Rush every day... Not a chance.

So next, I decided I would workout at home....enough said.

Well the next fallacy was, lets go shopping! Or not! What is fun about pushing a 45lb 4yr old combined with a 35lb 2yr old, along with the weight of the stroller, diaper bags, and Brinley strapped to the front of me in the Bjorn! (Yep that's my workout) Also, I must add that people would rather stop and stare at a struggling mom trying to open the door or get through impassable passage ways than stop and help! So the shopping went out the window too!

So then I was like, we will just have play dates all day every day but I didn't take it into consideration that other people work, they are busy, their kids are on different schedules, and its just not simple to have play dates all day every day. In addition, to trying to have play dates, I try to make sure the kids, the house and myself are perfect! (That's not reality what so ever!)

So what I have learned; is, that the life of the stay at home mom is very humbling. There are no awards, thank yous or fairies! Its all about cleaning the same stuff over and over all day, feeding the kids all day, doing the endless mounds of laundry and letting go of your preconceived notions of what I thought it should be BUT rather enjoying the real moments that count with your children who will remember me more for playing with them than they will remember the gym dates, perfect play dates, mall trips or any of the unimportant things in life.

However, I must say that my wonderful husband foots the bill for my kids to go to Mother's Day Out and they get the opportunity to receive educational time, personal interaction with other kids their age and it gives me, mom, a day (well 5hours) without three kids under the age of four. MDO allows me to either clean, run errands, or just grab a latte with a friend and maybe just come home to watch an episode of Ellen with my best friend Brin.

So in the end, its not a fantasy, not a fairy tale but I am humbly content and blessed to have the opportunity to pour into my children's life and mold them into the children and one day adults that I hope pray for them to be.

October; Tricks, treats, and Tractors!

What a great start to the month we had...Ray's football team the Knoxville Knights won the Alliance Football Championship, back to back champs! Let me give you a little history on this for those of you who are not familiar with the AFL. This is a semi pro football team who plays teams from all over the east coast and gives those guys a second chance at football to be scouted or just to play for the love of the game. Ray has been playing for over 8years now. He played with his first team the Raiders and now he plays with the Knights. We have traveled to Chicago, Georgia, Kentucky, and Virgina just to name a few! With that, I must add I love watching him play and went to watch Ray play a game only days before having Bry and to top that I was in Kentucky with him not even two weeks after having Brinley! I support him and so does my dad! We are Ray's biggest fans!!! By the way, Ray was supposed to "retire" this year but I am not holding my breath! lol.

Next, we celebrated Colton's 2nd Bday!! Yep he is in the terrible 2's!!! Colton's alias is "crash" he has like this moment of reason in his eyes but it immediately flies out the window and there he goes like reckless abandonment! Lord help me with this child! Oh yeah back to the party! We had a wonderful birthday celebration with several of our closest friends and family! He had a John Deer tractor themed party because he loves tractors. He got tractors galore! It was a wonderful party and for the grand finale he got a ride on lawn mower, just like his late pappaw (his idol)! So Bittersweet.

Last, we Trick or Treated! We kicked off the Halloween festivities with Boo at the Zoo and we took cousin Aly!Brinley was a princess (of course), Colton was spiderman, Aly a princess and Bryson was the blue power ranger! It was insanely crowded. What can I say we still loved it! Then on Halloween we trick or treated at the neighbors and family! It was a lot of fun and we got tons of candy! Bry said he wanted to do that every night! Lol. He also loved our house decorated and called it a "spook house!"

It was a great October!

November a month of Thanks?! Or A month about Bry?

November was a month of parties! For Bry that is! My little man turned the big 4!!! So we celebrated and celebrated and celebrated!

Bry wanted a party with all of his friends and I didn't think we could pull it off but we did, we took the party to Bry! His Mammaw, Nana and I got pizza, balloons and decorations then headed to Bry's mothers day out with Colton tagging along to have a party for him and his friends! We set up the big party scene for Bry to walk into and he was scared, and surprised all at once. Not the reaction I was expecting. However, after the initial shock he was happy as a lark to have us all there for his "real" birthday. The only thing he didn't understand was, where are the presents?! So presents he got. He got a big new transformer (that's totally un-transformable) and Buzz Lightyear. Bry's typical response was, and any 4 years olds, that's it?! He is just like his momma! I had to explain because his birthday was on a weekday, he would have another party on the weekend. Trying to make it to the weekend seemed like eternity for this child! Guess what, he made it and, we partied down! We had pizza, Transformer cookie cake and most importantly he got more presents! Whew, I am partied out for the big #4, wonder what he expects for his 5th birthday, thank the good lord I have a whole year until then!

A December to Remember...

Its been a December to Remember! I think I will quit my job every year for the holidays!

This was a busy month!

First, we got snow! Yes it only lasted a few hours but we enjoyed every minute of it! I have no idea how I managed to even get Christmas shopping done but I did!

We went to the Fantasy of Trees and that was an adventure, to say the least. It was not bad but the kids just weren't that into it. I think we may nap before we go next year! However, Bryson did tell Santa what he wanted (Bry is petrified of people dressed up in costumes) Spike the Ultra Dinosaur! And what did Santa bring? Spike!

Then, Bryson was a shepherd for his school performance, or other known as mothers day out. He did excellent! He had two lines, "thank you for coming to our naniviny (nativity) performance. We hope you enjoyed the show!" He said his lines in front of a full auditorium and I gave him a standing ovation, of course!! Got it all on tape and he said, "mom you went nuts with the pictures!" Too funny but I love my babies!

Then, we went to Dollywood to see the lights and Christmas parade with cousin Zhenya, cousin Avner, Aunt Alisha and Nana. This was also an adventure. Not many pics from this one! Lol.

Last, but not least was Christmas! We attended 4 Christmases, dinners and presents included in all not to include Santa on Christmas morning and too say the least it was good but exhausting! We all got more than we need or deserve!

So here we are counting down to the near year of 2010, wonder what this year will bring? Praying for grace and favor.

Change, Change and more change

Well to say the least there has been change going on....

I have continued to struggle with whether or not I should, could work with three kids and what would be the best for the family. I miss medical sales but I don't miss setting at a desk all day from my previous job. I am praying for the perfect part time job to fall into my lap! In the mean time of me and my dilemma there has been even more change.

First, Colton is officially off the bottle! Yes, to some this would seem simple but for Colton, his bottle became his second mommy when I lost my milk supply and wasn't able to nurse any more. So at 2yrs and 2months we had a detox on our little man and he is "ba-ie" free!! I mean he still asks but then he immediately says, "ba-ie fooora babies." So cute. Then on top of detox mode for Colton he lost his beloved potty monkey, where you ask, I don't know or else it wouldn't be lost! So he has a new friend, baby lion! Whew! Glad he cuts his losses and moves on quickly.

Speaking of cutting, that is another change we are experiencing, Princess Brinley is cutting her teeth! This girl has no pain tolerance at all, poor baby! She is also growing and thus her appetite is too. Therefor we have embarked on the adventure of baby cereal and she loves it so much she growls and pushes the spoon into her mouth if I'm not feeding her fast enough! I will upload you a pic of this messy scene!

Last, we are still working on project remodel the whole house! Ahhh! Curse you HGTV for your ideas! Well they are not entirely to blame. We needed the space and I am not complaining, except for its a lot more to clean....and soon to be more!? To top it all Ray has mentioned he is almost ready to do phase #3 of the remodel the addition of the garage and new master suite, etc! AHHH! Ray, can I have a maid??

.....Change~no one likes it except a wet baby! :)

Things in Review 2009

All I can say is what a year...
It has been a year of good and bad, ups and downs and life lessons learned. We began 09 with a fast for "protection, provision, and prosperity" and that he did. God kept us, protected us, provided for us and prospered us but not in the way we had in mind. I was blessed with a job in medical sales, the job I fasted for and prayed for over 2 years. However, it turned out to be the job that took me away from those I loved most, my family. I took the job in October 08 to unexpectedly find out weeks later we were pregnant with our third baby. I had to travel to Tampa during the Christmas season to ponder the whole time on the decisions I had made and if the sacrifices were worth this job I wanted. Also on top of all that I was dealing with the fact they couldn't find the heart beat in this 3rd pregnancy, so literally my wonderful doctor waited till I got off my 2hour delayed flight in from Tampa, past office hours to find out if the baby had a heart beat or not just days before Christmas. Thankfully the heartbeat was strong and we knew in 09 our family would be growing. Immediately we began transforming our house from duplex to a fully functional 2 story home and added an additional living room. Its very challenging to live in a construction zone and better yet when your pregnant!
Things with work continued to be stressful and take me away from my family and then I began to have dehydration problems and it began to put me into labor at 30 weeks. SO for the next five weeks I would spend it in and out of the hospital trying to keep Brinley in till week 36. Then in the mean time the unthinkable happened, Ray's dad passed away after having a double knee replacement he had a blood clot travel and block the backside of his heart. This is still hard to talk about. I may blog on it more later. So here we are just a couple of weeks from having Brinley and we are mourning the loss of the best father in law ever. The good and the bad of 09....

July 23rd 09 and 10:20, after 17 hours of labor in addition to 3hours of active pushing and seconds away from a c-section, Brinley Rae makes her grand appearance. She was not the biggest of my three weighing in at 9lbs and 1oz but to say the least she is and was the most difficult of the three. That's all I can say about Princess Brinley Rae!

Back to the job thing, I had finally established my territory and was doing great with West Knox as my territory. I was on maternity leave for a planned 12 weeks, which is a lot more than most people get but it just wasn't enough time for all that was going on in me. So I quit. Now I embarked on the journey of a stay at home mom of three babies under age 4!

Yes,this year has been a year of changes....