Frustration!

Little things are starting to get to me. Like this: someone asked me to bake something for a Young Women fund raiser tonight to auction off, which I had a bad feeling about but said yes anyway, and I attempted to make it today. I got all the ingredients I didn't have on hand, mixed it up, baked it and guess what? The oil was rancid! (Not really surprising because I never cook or bake but have a year's supply of it anyway) I would justify taking it if it were a dessert that I could anonymously leave on the potluck table and walk away, but to wrap it up and have people bid money on? I can just see the poor person who spent $15-20 on it and getting it home only to gag and spit it out in the sink. I give up! I'm not making anything else for it and I'm not buying anything either. I'll just make an extra donation and try not to dwell on it anymore.

Next: so far I have painted five colors on the new bathroom walls and still can't find something I'm happy with. Annoying! What's wrong with me? I had way too many color disasters last year (four to be exact) and had a new year's resolution to not have any this year. If January is any indication of how the rest of the year will go I'm in big trouble. Each new color makes me feel like the walls that were just put up are getting increasingly larger making the bathroom increasingly smaller. The stupid paint is what keeps the bathroom under construction for these long months and well, I guess it's getting to me.

I was hoping that by writing my frustrations down it would make me feel better and possibly diminish these feelings. Letting the world know may not be the best decision, but here it is... I'm frustrated! I'm annoyed that things keep breaking, that the car smells like throw-up, that the grass is brown, annoyed that there's a rust spot on the new tile from the painting supplies I left there, annoyed that one child is sick, that another one keeps having tantrums and I can't seem to deal with it very well, annoyed that I have to do physical therapy on a child who screams when I do it, annoyed by all the dirty diapers (I found 14 one day when I decided to clean up a little), annoyed at another child's chewing with their mouth open and annoyed at myself that something like that annoys me, annoyed by all the computer problems I seem to have with the 10 different programs I have to use for school, and also annoyed that someone keeps bothering me as I write this! (And why is my cat rubbing me so hard? err)

I'm sure it has a lot (if not all) to do with the fact that I stayed up till 3:30 last night and around 2:00 the other nights this week working on projects for school. I am sleep deprived! The first week of class, for example, I pulled four all nighters. I knew design would be hard, especially since I can barely manage my life with three small kids in the first place. The night before it started I was ready to drop out because I knew what my life would be like and how I would probably act under the pressure. People say "I don't know how you do it". My answer? "Not very well." It's hard, very hard. Some things just have to go. My house is a complete disaster and will be for three more months, laundry is backed up (you should see some of the outfits the kids end up with when they have no more normal clothes, but I take them places anyway), I wear baby food stained clothes to school and have bags under my eyes, I don't have patience with the kids all the time and let them watch more TV than experts recommend kids have their entire childhood, and I wonder if my kids will be affected for the rest of their lives because of my decision to go to school.

My only consolation in this whole thing is a blessing I received the day I started back. It said that this is what the Lord wants me to do. I really have no idea why. I mean I do love architecture a lot. My patriarchal blessing says I will excel academically and I never really felt like I was until this degree. I feel like I am living that part of my blessing. It is the right thing to do for me. It's something I really have a passion about. But I also love being a mother and would love to dedicate more time to being a better one right now. I wonder why these two roles have overlapped so much. I became pregnant with Erin the month after I went back to school 5 1/2 years ago so it is all my kids know. Adding a child every couple of years has been both a blessing and a huge challenge. In the past I always had some window when the kids were napping or at school. Now I seem to always have a child awake demanding juice in a different color sippy cup that I already filled up or needing yet another diaper change when I just changed it 10 minutes ago. The only hours I seem to have for school are in the middle of the night (yeah, it's always a bad sign when the school bus drives by and I'm still awake).

All right, enough of the complaining. I wrote it down, and I guess I do feel better--not as good as I'll feel after a shower and a nap, but nonetheless, better. This is what I chose for my life. Not all days are like this, but overall I just feel like I have to hold on for dear life until it's over and hope the family doesn't fall apart in the mean time. The lady I visit teach (an incredible woman) keeps telling me that my family will be blessed for this and that I won't regret it. I just hope she is right!

Butch (part 2)

All right, all right! I know I didn't attach a picture but believe me, Erin did not want one taken of her. I can't remember what I said to get this one, but here it is. Not the best picture; it certainly doesn't make my leg hair look any better.



I got this one online searching under "female baldness". Is it just me or do these pictures look a lot alike?

More supervision

Remember Erin? Remember her cute curly hair? Remember how long it took her to grow hair in the first place? Well, obviously Erin has different hair goals than I do for her. Yesterday after I took the rubber bands out of her hair from the previous day, I started brushing it and huge clumps of hair came out. At first I was so baffled and concerned until the truth came out that she had been having fun with the scissors... again. We were just recovering from the last time she cut her hair, but that was a few inches off the sides. This was much worse! Somehow she cut a triangle from the middle right above her forehead. And she cut it all off. We're talking stubble, shorter than my leg hair is on most days. She keeps saying how good it feels, which kind of concerns me about this happening in the future.

Sure, in the long run I know it doesn't really matter. In two, maybe three years we may never even notice (assuming she doesn't make a habit of it). But every time I see her I keep thinking about those ladies with female balding. There's just something weird about seeing someone's scalp like that. I know, I know, almost every little girl does something like this, right? I remember my little sister having stubble for bangs for a while there as a child, and I've certainly had my share of really bad, short, cut myself bangs (I wonder why I did that so many times and never learned from my mistakes). But Erin didn't have bangs. Now she just has a really wide part that I have no idea how it's going to look when it starts growing out. For now I just have to experiment with different variations of acceptable comb-overs.

Things like this make me wonder if my kids are getting enough supervision, although I do have to give myself credit for catching Marissa with a dead lizard head in her hand that was heading for her mouth (at least I think... hey, I didn't have to scoop it out of her mouth anyway. And yes, I did find Erin sucking on a lizard when she was about this age too). And what's more, remember my goal of not letting my baby fall off the bed? We were doing so well until this morning. I really can't see how it was my fault though because I was asleep when Jared asked me if Marissa was all right with me on the bed and I said yes... but I was asleep! At least until she hit the floor and started screaming. Better luck next baby.

P.S. I just turned around and found Marissa in a pile of garbage that she had just dumped out. You know the bathroom garbage with Q-tips, hairballs, band aids and tissues? Yeah, and I pulled something out of her mouth... sick! I guess I proved my own point.

Jared Needs.....Laura Needs

A friend of ours posted this on their site...called "Google Knows." You simply go to Google and type in your name followed by "needs" and see what comes up. Obviously some people really don't like me because for some reason I need to die! Nice way to waste some good time :)

According to Google:

Jared:
Needs to go!
Needs to Lay the Smack Down
Needs your support
Needs to DIE!
Needs to be stopped!

Laura:
Needs some post-toddler love
Needs to hear from other teachers who may be having similar dilemmas and getting things out in the open
Needs your continued support
Needs Your Insight!
Needs her meds changed

Erin:
Needs another miracle
Needs to wear shirts
Needs a liver transplant
Needs a cooler name
Needs a servant

Alex:
Needs a new house
Needs anger management
Needs a girlfriend
Needs help
Needs a lynching mob

Marissa:
Needs to receive a glycogen shot
Needs your help
Needs someone to save her
Needs your phone#
Needs friends

Christmas (a month late I know)

I figured since our Christmas lights are still up, it's not too late to post Christmas pictures (and yes, as each day in January goes by I get more and more embarrassed about the lights being up... I guess not enough to take them down though).

This is the Sunday before Christmas. They each got some new church clothes. Awww!

This is Christmas Eve morning (due to the fact that we flew to Utah on Christmas morning). I feel like I did a much better job on Christmas this year than any other year. Maybe because all Erin wanted was Princess stuff and that was pretty easy to do. It was just great because the kids are older and get really excited about everything. We got them both bikes which I still think was a good idea even though neither of them can ride them yet (Alex's is a bit big and Erin's was bent and kept leaning to the right. We took that one back and still need to get a new one.) And Marissa is in one of her classic positions. I've never seen a baby hang out on her side like that, but she loves it.

This table has to be the best present of all. I've been wanting to get Erin a table, but this wasn't what I had in mind. She saw it in a magazine and circled it so I, that is Santa got it. Three reasons it's the best: it has princesses on it, it was cheap and you can draw on it with dry erase markers. A table you are supposed to draw on? Of course! It's amazing how much the kids like it.

Amidst all the excitement she must have lost her pants, but what a happy girl! Oh, and that butterfly gets mixed reviews. It's supposed to encourage crawling, that is unless you point it at the baby, in which case it just attacks her by flapping its wings in her face while sounding "It's a Small World After All".

This is one a Jared and my many experiments with our 5 year old camera. We must have been bored that night because we got such a kick out of putting it on a long exposure, aiming at the Christmas tree and doing zigzags, circles or lines. I'm thinking of making them into wall hangings. You should try it.

It's Laura's Fault!

So...I've been released from my calling as Scoutmaster in our ward...and it is Laura's fault! Not that I blame her. She has begun another semester of design in her Architorture (architecture) program and her classes are from 6-10 on Tuesday and Thursday evenings...right when our youth nights are held. To give her the benefit of the doubt, she didn't actually ask that I be released, but simply told the bishop what her schedule was going to be this next year and I think that he made the right decision. Although it is a bit tough to know that my time in the ward YM program is at an end, apparently my time in YM is not quite over...I was just sustained as a counselor in the Stake YM presidency! I'm not sure what this means - but it probably means that I messed up the ward youth program sufficiently that I am now to try and make up for it on a stake basis.

So yeah...Laura has begun her design class. It's only been 6 days since she has started, and she has already had 2 late nights (besides her actual classes), and many other hours working on this first project. It's amazing to me how she does it, but she is extremely dedicated to getting her stuff done, and done very well. I think she probably has the best major GPA in her program.

And so it has begun. One more push this year and she will be done! Even though I'm probably her biggest fan of finishing her Architecture degree, I'll be relieved when she finally has that degree in-hand (probably as much as she will be), and so will the dishes, the laundry, the rooms, etc... She does so much for our home that when she's "gone" for just a little while I become a lot more appreciative of what she does.

Just a quick pic of her at her "drawing board"


She is working on analyzing a piece of downtown Ft. Lauderdale...here is the actual picture...


And here is her rendering...amazing similarities!