I wish, I wish

I think most of the comments I make about this house start with those two words. Today I want to make my house mine by throwing paint on the walls and getting more decorations up. Then I decide on colors and realized EVERYTHING clashes with the horrid green carpet. I wish.... I could replace this carpet!

I'm caught in the place where I want all the fix-ups done at once, and there isn't enough money to do even one of them. All in time, I know!

Wish We Had Our Garden

So the last post told of sprinklers not being fixed, which now are Yay! I've realized the reality of how much lawn we have when I did the first mowing... with a push lawn mower. Holy cow! All I can say is that I better lose some weight this summer!

We took the kids to the temple grounds this morning to take some pictures of them in their Easter clothes. I love that my kids pretend to be royalty and the temple is so special to them. Evan is always saying things about "when I get married in the temple..."

So, with the last post I said I hope the sprinklers would be fixed soon, and now they are! With that said, the next post should have our garden going. I can wish, right?

We did get our playset put back up. Now our yard looks like our yard, and the kids are really happy. As we were digging through stuff, both of the kids found their life jackets and wore them around all day. Evan even added his bike helmet. It's pretty bad when the parents put together the playset, and the kids play on it wearing bike helmets and life jackets. Don't they trust us?

Hello Again

I don't blog much these days. Since we bought a house and sold one in the past few weeks, our time has been scarce and stress has prevailed at our house. The selling of our house was sad and we were angry about how the appraisal turned out, but the young couple who bought it love it and they are adorable. That being said, our new house is great. We have a lot of kinks to work out before we can get our grass greener and the house less green, but it will all take some time. We just have to be patient!

Our kids have been so good with all the stress surrounding them. They are loving the house too. It's hard to believe that Evan is nearly done with kindergarten. He has done so well this year. The thing that excites him the most is that he can now pick up any book and read it to us. We are incredibly proud of how well he is doing. He has picked up naughty words and behaviors from school though and willingly shares them with Madi. Grr!

Madilyn is all drama and emotions. A girl, right? She speaks so much better than Evan did at this age. I love watching her talk because her eyes are SO expressive! She is always the little shadow following me around the house all day. I just wish the kid would stop getting sick all the time. I swear her sicknesses come from her sucking her fingers. How in the world do I get her to stop?

Someday we will have all of our boxes unpacked, and the house more organized. Between both of us working full-time and trying to get the sprinkler system in the yard fixed, there hasn't been a lot of time for putting things in their rightful places. I was just glad to get pictures up on the wall. We still have a lot to do, but we are glad we decided to make the move and be out of our 2 bed/ 1 bath and into a 3 bed/ 2 bath with an acre of land. Plus, Central has been great!

Thoughts on Being a Nurse

Being a nurse is hard, especially when I have kids to care for at home and feel guilty for workig full-time. I would stay at home if I could. Some days are really hard at work--draining stress, difficult patients, or the all-too-common bickering amongst fellow staff members. Then you couple all that with the terrible economy and the news of no raises and the loss of hospital income. Grrr... sometimes I wonder why I wanted to be a nurse in the first place.

This week I floated to the medical-surgical floor on a particularly busy day. I think we turned over half the census with new patients... some of them so time-consuming! The one thing that makes me sad about what I saw that day was the after-math of the lifestyle changes some of the patients were experiencing. Thank you work of wisdom! I came home tired, sad, and so glad that I get to work in OB.

In stark contrast, the next two days I spent a lot of time with a labor induction of a sweet family who was so appreciative of my care. They thanked me many times over for the care I rendered. Then the icing on the cake... 16 minutes before the end of my shift after two days of an agonizing induction for this young lady, her baby made its presence. I love birthday parties! Life is such an amazing miracle! Every time I help with a delivery, feeligs of amazement consume me. This partifular family made me feel like a million dollars with the appreciation they showed me.

Yes, I am happy that I chose to be a nurse. Thank you to all those who thank their nurses!

6 Days until 6 years old

I can't believe how quickly my little Evan is growing up. Starting school seems to be the point where your kid becomes "BIG." Talking back, making friends, and making me SO SO proud! Evan has been such a joy and blessing to us since the day he was born. Something about his chocolate brown eyes and gorgeous smile just sucks me in, and he has the sweetest personality to go along with to good looks! I feel like the luckiest mom in the world to get to claim this little man.

So what are we doing for the special little man? We are taking him to the Arizona Museum of Natural History so he can see the dinosaurs. It's going to be a fun day celebrating with this man dinosaur style!

12 more days until Christmas

Christmas season is fun this year. Evan is finally old enough to really be into it and has hit us with loads of questions! But, he is still gullable, and that is twice as much fun! Madilyn is really excited too.

This past months has been filled with sickness, sewing, work, karate, and lots of time with the kids outside.

We have nearly finished the porch on the back of the house. Now it just needs a little more paint and some rain sealing on the roof. Wohoo! We thought we'd have to wait until next summer to enjoy it, but the weather has been so nice that we are already loving it!

I promise to one day learn to post more pictures. I post them all on facebook though, so I don't see the need to do both.

I hope your house is as excited about Christmas as mine is!

I can't believe it's almost November

It seems like this year in particular has gone by so quickly. Todd and I are both working full-time and he is still going to school full-time online. Because of this, we just don't have much spare time. My only hope is that at some point, we will start enjoying our time more. It feels like the time we have with our two beautiful children is quickly slipping away. Working full-time at with my kids so young just breaks my heart. Although I wouldn't want to stay at home all the time, full-time is just so hard! The only consolation is that our kids love their babysitter and really enjoy and look forward to the days they spend there. They are such good kids too!

Evan started karate in July, and it has kept us quite busy, but he LOVES it! We love watching him too. It makes me proud to watch him gain so much confidence from it. He is really good at it too! In a few weeks he will be participating in his first belt exam to get his yellow belt. He is so excited! He starting to get really interested in being strong and beating bad guys.

For Halloween this year, Evan was Batman and Madilyn was a princess. They had so much fun at the trunk-or-treat and then we went to a few houses afterward so they could knock on a few doors. Evan asked about Halloween constantly for over a month, so we are waiting to mention Christmas to him.

We bought land last year hoping to build a house on it in a few years. I wish we would have waited a little longer. We were trying to move back to St. Johns for awhile, but have since decided to stay here in the Gila Valley. With the economy the way it is, the houses near where our land is are not selling, and we are afraind to build since Todd is not finished with school and working his dream job. We also have bills we need to pay off, but because we are putting such a huge chunk of money toward our land, we aren't getting anything paid off. So, we decided to put our land back up for sale. I am praying that we get it sold quickly! It is so sad to let go of a dream. The land is 1.7 acres of horse property way out away from busy streets (like the college street we live on now) and is backed by BLM land. It has a GORGEOUS view of Mt. Graham and the surrounding smaller mountains. We really fell in love with it. I hope someone else does too. There is just no way that we can afford to build a house on it in the next year, and we HAVE to move into a bigger house sooner than the 4 years we have left to pay on it.

The house we live in now is too small for our family of four, and there is no way we can fit another child in it if and when we have one. We haven't decided to rent or sell our house yet. So many decisions!