Having Summertime Fun!

We have been having fun for sometime now but lately, we have just been having some great funny moments. I asked Hayden what he wants to be when he grows up and he told me a policeman. I said "Really?" and he said "yes, a policeman". So, I just had to write that in his journal, his first career choice at 4 years old...hehehe...I thought it was great. Maybe our gift of giving teachings have paved the way to where he wants to help others. Whatever it is, I'm so proud of him anyways.

The funny thing right now is he will ask me something like, what are we having for dinner? So I tell him and his answer is "nice..." and he says it like a smooth teenager...hehehe...He says it now ALL the time after anything, it is hilarious. I don't even know where he picked it up but it comes across like someone who would say "sweet!"...hehehe. He is such a funny kid.

Today we went to the children's museum and made a natural bird nest feeder. It was really cool and the kids had a blast. I had to peel them out of there and then we took daddy for lunch. They love that. Ludington is very happening right now, it's busy, the streets are loaded and it just makes me want to play the Beach Boys and drive around...hehe. We went and saw Reo Speedwagon and they were fantastic. We all danced and the kids loved it. Tomorrow is the parade, which is the best parade of Ludington, in my opinion and then another concert with fireworks.

Saturday is a beach day with family, food and fun and Sunday is church and the art fair. I am so excited to sing this week, we have some lovely songs. The gal I sing with told me she would really love to hear me do some solos, so I am thinking about it...I told her to ask me in a couple of months. My confidence is definitely building, I sing now with no nerves at all but I'm also on stage with other people. The youth pastor who leads the band said I sounded beautiful tonight at rehearsal and that made me feel really good. At my art council meeting, they found out I sing and jotted that down so I'm not sure what I'm getting myself into but hopefully it is a musical or theatre...That would be awesome!!

So, summer is buzzing by and we are having a great time...I haven't exercised in months and it really doesn't matter at this point, kids are first and my top priority...I'm having too much fun and LOVING it!! Something happened when we went away to Boyne Mountain for my husband's regional. I had soooo many people coming up to me and saying how awesome I looked and how they really look forward to seeing me each year and one even came up and said I'm a star, that everyone loves me...It was the weirdest thing because it wasn't just one or two...it was like 13 different people!! Then some even made comments to my husband about how much they love me and I'm so beautiful....okay, you don't understand, I lack serious confidence and have terrible self-esteem so for this to happen to me was mind blowing...

My hubby said everyone loves you, you have that personality and you glow and you are so beautiful....breathes....All I can say is, it made my entire year...I got showered with an unbelievable amount of compliments and I'm still in shock from it...I swear I'm not bragging, I'm just sharing an exciting time for me and I'm so happy I could burst!

So, back to my kids, enough about me....I have fantastic news!!! Hayden is going to be donating money to the children's museum and his preschool teacher works there during the summer so I was telling her today about his gift of giving project we are working on. She wants me to call her a few days before he hand delivers the money and she is having the newspaper come and take pics of him!! I am sooooooooooooo excited for him!!!

Having Summertime fun!!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOO!!!!
Happy 4th of July!!!

Kids and Life

My little darling girl, Vanessa, is really taking off lately. She now goes potty everyday in her potty, several times a day. We are so PROUD of her and how easy she is making potty training. I think she could very easily have this down by the end of summer. She is also learning her alphabet, she named three letters to me today and that is all I had time to work with her so she may know more and I don't know yet. Hayden has learned and is now officially comfortable swimming underwater, so what did he do in the bath tonight? Teach her to put her face underwater and she LOVED it. I told him, I'm not quite ready for her to learn that...Panic was inside me the whole time she was doing it and she did it like 4 times.

Vanessa is also very smart, she catches on to things so quickly it amazes me. We were all playing legos and Hayden and I were building with small ones and Vanessa had big ones, well she came across a big lego that wasn't actually a lego...It was a piece from another company that somehow got in the lego box...imagine that...hehehe...Anyways, she looked at it and looked at me and shook her head no and gave it to me and continued building. She didn't say a word, just nodded to me that it wasn't the right kind of block and went on...How cute! I know that is something so little but it means the world to me and she was able to identify that right away.

Ever since she was a tiny little person, I would say around 5 months old, she could put her shirt on and put her arms in with no problem. I don't know how she learned but you basically stuck her shirt over her head and she did the rest. Well, she now undresses herself and can put her pants, socks and shoes all on herself. I still have to help some but she has it down pretty darn good. Of course, once in awhile you will see her with Hayden's underwear around her neck...LOL! What a kid!

I'm just so proud of her, she is just a delight to all of us and Hayden is a fantastic brother. He teaches her things all the time. He just taught her to throw a frisbee the other day and now she loves to do that. She is also doing great with throwing a ball. I'm really having so much fun with the kids lately. Hayden at swimming lessons went underwater four times and jumped off the diving board three and his confidence has gone through the roof...It's just fantastic.

So, my little girl is getting so big, my son is excelling more and more everyday. (Homeschooling is going great, he is up to reading 18 books a day with me!) We have spent quite a bit of time at the library lately, both of them just love it and with our colder weather I've taken advantage of the wonderful indoor activities in town.

As for me, I'm so busy with them I don't have much time for anything else although last night Brian and I went to our orientation for volunteering for the Arts Center. I'm so excited I could burst! They have so many cool things planned and I talked to the gal who plans all the events and classes and I gave her a few ideas and she put me on the committee. Brian said I was in my element and beaming. They want to get children's acting classes and have Shakespeare plays and artists are bringing work in for galleries. I told them all the many things I can do so they were very excited also. I told Brian I will do acting as well because I did it in college. How fun would that be!!!

They are bringing many different classes from sculpting to dance and I can teach too. I'm so giddy about it, I really am. This is just something I don't see me temporarily being involved in but for my lifetime or as long as we are in this town. Brian wants me to become a board member but I think I will start with being on a committee and doing a bunch of volunteer work, along with teaching or showing my own talents. I told them about my photography and graphic design work and I'm hoping my pieces can be showcased at some point.

I can already see my future, MOPS, kid's school involvement and the Arts Center...What a great lineup. Life just got even better!

Yea for Vanessa!!

Vanessa went pee in her potty today!! Yea!!!! WooHoo!! We had a party for her, she clapped and giggled too! This is great!!!

Setting My Mind Free

So, I am driving in the car tonight and my hubby and I got into deep conversation, we had a long drive and it was a perfect setting. We started talking about what makes us happy and I'm not going to go into all of our details but something happened and what I thought would make me happy is NOT what makes me happy. I'm talking about my weight. I truly have been thinking if I could just buckle down and get this weight off, I would be so happy. My opinion changed in moments of this conversation.

So we talked and I realized what makes me happy is my family and my art and talents, volunteering and traveling the world. I knew this but not to the level that I thought. I thought the weight thing was more important an issue for me. Recently, I have created a MySpace page and I have come across friends from high school. They are giving me unbelievable compliments..."You look incredible" one said..." You are gorgeous" another said. I went back to my photos and I looked at me and I thought, I beg to differ...I'm fatter and older! Then I looked again...I have a beautiful face. I may have weight on but I am beautiful and my family is beautiful.

I also thought of how I recently ran into a friend the same age that I hadn't seen in a year or so and she lost 30 pounds. I don't want to be mean but she aged 10 years. She weighed maybe 150 pounds before and now is 120 pounds and the wrinkles came out terrible. I don't want that. I want to be more healthy, yes, but I AM healthy now. I thought of how last year I went to Hersheypark and played the guess my age game...The girl said 26 and I was 36. I never felt so confident and proud then I did at that moment.

So, I am freeing my mind of my weight issues, I'm concentrating on what makes me feel beautiful and what I have that is beautiful, even if it is only a pretty face and skinny legs! hahahaha

My children are my mirror images of my happiness...what makes me happy is seeing my son excel so much and know that he is 4 with a kindergardner's brain and know that I am working so hard at homeschooling to help him even more. What makes me happy is teaching my daughter and watching her blossom into such a sweet spirit. She is only 19 months old and sitting on her potty already! Yea for Vanessa!!! Those little things give me so much happiness.

I've been making my own money and saving for a camera and I'm so close to achieving that goal and I can do my photography again, that makes me so happy. I gave forks and spoons that I decorate to Hayden's teachers, they didn't know I made them. They thought I bought them and as soon as they found out, they want to place orders to give as gifts! I'm ecstatic about that!!!! I do it as a hobby and it could make me money...woohoo!

I'm going to sing on Sunday, that makes me happy. I have a meeting coming up for volunteering with the Art League and I am so excited to see what all I can do. That makes me happy. It's not that I am saying, Oh, I will just stay fat...I just need to get rid of any thoughts about it at all because it puts negativity in me and makes me look at me from the outside and that is not what I want to teach my kids. I love food, I have pretty much gone back to no meat, I eat more vegetables than anything besides chocolate...hehehe. I make sure my kids eat great, they don't drink pop, they don't eat candy unless it is a special treat. I am doing what makes me happy and living a full, healthy life and having a ton of fun along with it.

I kept trying to figure out time to exercise...I don't want to figure out time to exercise...I want to stay so busy with my family and I am already so busy with extra-curricular activities and that is what I enjoy. I just don't want to worry about it anymore, I want to keep my youthful beauty from the inside out.

In ending, my conversation with my hubby opened a new door for me...I am throwing away the weight issues completely and concentrating on just making myself happy with the things that make me happy. That's all I need, truly. Friends, family, love, respect and my spirit to be free.

Hayden my hero!

I am watching my son blossom into a sweet, loving boy. Hayden has some great progressions, his speech is becoming clearer everyday. Those words with R's aren't giving him such a hard time anymore! His love for his sister is remarkable. We were in Pennsylvania and my cousin was playing with Vanessa, well she took her and set her inside her car, and they were just playing, there was a lot of people outside. Hayden came flying into my dad's house and ran to my dad and said "Papa, she is taking my sister!!!" He was crying and frantic. The most precious thing about it was he was REALLY, DEEPLY concerned and his love shown through so sweetly.

We explained that Maria ( Maria is 18) was just playing with her and she is okay and not going anywhere. He was relieved and you could see the weight come off his shoulders. I was amazed at his love for his sister and how quickly he responded to something he thought was wrong. This truly is a gift from GOD, a love so grand between siblings. So, we came back from Pa and Hayden had his last swimming lesson and got his certificate. He missed moving to level 2 by one thing, his instructor said he is so close, he just has to be able to go underwater. Which, he has done so several times but he won't every time and he has to, in order to move on.

We are still so proud of him and he has accomplished many things with swimming, he has a checklist that explains all that he has met and some of them are front float, back float, how to recognize a swimmer in distress, roll over from front to back and back to front, alternating arm action and leg action and exhaling underwater through mouth and nose (blow bubbles). He can do the doggy paddle so good, (that's what I call it). They put a noodle around him and off he goes swimming the whole length of the pool. He also can jump off the diving board which is fantastic but he won't do it every time and that is okay for now.

He is going to start a two week, everyday swim lesson starting in June and his instructor said we will really see a progression then and he may be able to move to level 2 in Fall. I'm so proud of him, either way, he is coming along just fine. Now, for school, he got two really cute homemade books yesterday with everything he can do and little projects he has done. Well, she had a checklist of everything he can do and here is some: He can recognize his name and most of the letters. H, Y, E, N. When she says that, she is referring to his writing his name and he does write the A and D but they aren't clear enough for his teacher to say he can write his whole name. But to me, he can!...hehehe He can identify 10 colors, all shapes and can count to 12, although he counts higher for me. Who knows what mood he is in when she asks him to do it....hehehe.

He is one of those kids that can do things but when you ask him, if he doesn't feel like it, he won't do it and again, that is okay for now, he is only 4. I think he is doing amazing. He can cut beautifully with scissors and can follow lines and shapes or pictures when cutting really well. He also can draw very well but his most impressive artistic ability is he can paint like no other child I've seen. He is awesome and I'm so proud!! His teacher is also very impressed with how he can name any dinosaur, tell her what kind of food it eats and where it would live. That is incredible!

The other day, he impressed his father and I so much, he gets animal magazines and they are informative and fun. Well, he grabbed one and wanted his dad to read to him and when it came to a two page spread about penguins, Hayden started naming all the different kinds like "Macaroni Penguin". I never even heard of a Macaroni penguin!! The craziest thing is, he was correct! Brian said to him, "How did you know that was a Macaroni Penguin?" He just looked at us. Now, mind you, I had read to him this magazine a longggggggg time ago and he remembered the different names of the penguins. I didn't even remember.

I think it is exciting to see what his interests are now too. He LOVES bugs and I watched him pick up a catepillar off the sidewalk and put it in the grass and he said to it "There you go" like you are safe now little buddy. It was soooo cute! He loves fishing and digging for worms and likes camping in a tent and making smores from a campfire. He loves animals and again can name any and all. He has an encyclopedia of animals and can tell me what all of them are. His dad built a t-ball stand and he LOVES playing baseball now and runs to the bases as we try to catch him. He giggles and squeals in delight! He loves golf and soccer and sitting on his dad's lap and playing piano. He has a love for flowers and anything pretty. He will say "Mom, this is beautiful" as he walks up to a flower or scenic area.

So, my Hayden is my hero and I am so thankful for this amazing kid in my life. He gives me so much joy, not just in his talents or smarts but just his silly self. He is growing so fast and I just breathe in every second of time with him. I watch and learn from him and he is remarkable. I am truly in awe of this little beautiful being.

Sickness Arrives Again

Now, I am undoubtedly ready for summer...good ole' sicknesses have come again. I have a runny nose, sinus congestion, headache problem...Hayden has a cough and his pink eye is gone but he still has drops put in until Friday. Vanessa has pink eye and an ear infection along with a nasty cough. Brian is our only healthy nut around here....can you say uuugghh, pleaseeeeeeee come summer! What do you do?

I also have not been entirely thrilled with our weather, the sun is shining but it is cold still. We were out today for not even an hour and Hayden said he was cold, of course, he fell asleep on the couch so he could have just been tired too. I'm hanging in there though, I could use some more sleep but I'll catch up eventually.

On to peachier subjects...smiling...I made that word up...hehehe...Peachier...sounds good to me...The fundraiser for Andre Bosse went fantastic, we are donating $1600 to the center! WooHoo!!! I'm so proud and feel very honored to have been a part of this success. The article in the paper about me was nice and I have been getting comments everywhere I go, which is a little weird but fun! I guess there may be another article after this is said and done telling how much was given and that will be cool.

In the end, I made some wonderful new friends, the ladies I worked with are just gems and I will always count my blessings for meeting them and having them in my life now. Today, I am working on a meal for a friend who just had a baby, I'm making cupcakes, meatloaf, potatoes and salad. I just did a meal for another friend in April and I am doing one in June and one in July. I absolutely love doing this kind of thing. If I could, I would make a business out of it.

So, even though sickness has wormed it's way into our lives again, I'm still able to do my volunteer work, which makes me so incredibly happy. It made me feel so good to explain to Hayden what the meal was all about and he said to me "Mom, they need that food to help them." He got it and understood.

I'm going to be in the newspaper!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, the Ludington Daily News called last night and they received a press release on me and thought I would be a good candidate for on their FRONT PAGE!! I was so nervous as the reporter interviewed me and later last night I jotted down all the key questions she asked me and wrote what I was trying to say (because I thought I did terrible...hehehe)

So, I had to go there this morning for my picture to be taken and I gave the reporter my written down thoughts, she said I did just fine but if anyone knows me, I was a ball of nerves so I had to make sure I said the right things...hehehe....I actually am triple excited about all of this and feel so honored!! Okay, breathe Kristen, breathe....ahhhhhhhhhh.

As far as other things going on, Vanessa was in yesterday's paper, a little blurry vision...hehhee...We went to a mother daughter banquet and there was a fashion show and a photographer snapped a photo of one of the gals in the show and Vanessa is in the background...hehehe. Too funny! I cut it out to put in her journal. I also have been working on taking photos of her to enter to a agency in Grand Rapids for modeling. I think I have the five pics needed, now we will see if she gets any calls.

Tomorrow, we go to see and pick out our baby bunny, he/she isn't ready to actually come home with us but we get to go and see the babies. I haven't told Hayden yet because he will flip out! He will ask me every minute when we are going so I thought I would just take him and surprise him. Not much else new, hubby has been busy busy with all his extra curricular activities and so have the kids and I.

Hayden is going to take a two week every day swimming course in June, this will really push him to the next level which I am excited about. Vanessa is starting a swim lesson in June as well. Hayden had lessons last night and he jumped off the diving board again, I was so proud and he is swimming underwater now and went under about 6 times.

My cooking class was awesome!! I am taking another on the 14th, this time it is brunch recipes. The cool thing about the pasta class is now I can make homemade pasta and give it as gifts! I already can see it, everyone is getting homemade pasta for Christmas!...hehehe

I found out the Sandcastles children's museum here in Ludington is opening from June-August and I can pay $50 and the kids can go everyday if they want, all summer, they have soooooo many activities, I am beyond excited about this. They do crafts and have guests come and puppet shows etc... The kids will absolutely go crazy there. Now, if the weather would stay like yesterday...sighs...today is dark, gloomy and rainy...Guess it's an indoor day but I have special things planned!