Ten Things to Smile About: June

June isn't even over and I have a long list of happy things for the month.

My little man graduated Kindergarten!  He picked his own outfit for the ceremony.  Funny that he REFUSES to wear the jacket to church but he wanted to look really nice for the ceremony. 

We had an even bigger graduation, our oldest graduated from high school.  Getting decent pictures that day turned out to be almost impossible but we are so proud of her.  

Schools out for SUMMER!  What better way to celebrate than with ice cream??  This also shows little sisters "cheese face".  

Started a summer schedule - so far we are having lots of fun with it!

One of our "Make Something Monday" projects - gake!  This was a HUGE hit. 

 Loved capturing this visual depiction of my kids drastically personalities.  Two are non-stop, always part of the action kids and the other would much rather find a quite corner and take things at his own pace.  We were at the library summer reading kick off and that's exactly what happened! 

Love all my kids and the littles especially adore their big sister.  

They are going to be very sad when she goes off to college. 

 Celebrating Father's Day with my husband and the crazy kids! 

The little kids helped make the carrot cake from scratch. 

Teachers!  My kids have been very blessed with some wonderful teachers and 

now that it is summer - I appreciate them even more!!!

I got to go back to my old job and serve as a volunteer chief for a multi-day full scale disaster exercise. 

It was great to be back and most of all to be with some of my old staff. Miss them! 

  

 Linking up over at Emmy Mom's Ten Things to Smile About...

Summer Game Plan... or my attempt to not go crazy with small children in the Vegas Heat!

June has arrived, we are counting down the final days of school and I've been busy pinning all the amazing Summer Bucket lists popping up on Pinterest.   This year my three youngest kids are 5, 4 and 2 and I've decided it's time to create a plan of attack for our summer.

I don't like to schedule everything but I find that if I just "hope" we will do things and have fun, we end up spending hours doing nothing. {Correction, I spend time trying to figure something out while the kids go crazy or fight - not all the time of course but that is generally how it feels}.  Another problem with not having a plan is that we live in Vegas. If we want to go out and do some activities we need to start early before its 1,000 degrees outside.  Let's just say I'm not a morning person so hoping I get moving early without something scheduled just doesn't work so well. I decided it I needed to take all these great ideas I'm pinning and come up with the Garcia Game Plan for Summer.

First, I love the bucket list concept but I knew that wouldn't quite work for us.  My oldest son who just finished Kindergarten, loves check lists, but he also due to ADHD loves to hyperfocus.  He will see one thing on that list and I will hear about it non-stop until we do it, and quite frankly my sanity can't handle hearing about something twenty times a day that I know we can't do until August!

I knew both my ADHD self and my son needed something that enough structure to keep us on track and therefore having fun but also flexibility since life happens!  When I saw this idea, I fell in love! The idea comes from a Power of Moms post, a site that always has great support for Moms. I love the idea of having a "theme" for each day that I can plan for and my kids can look forward to but it also gives me flexibility to change it up easily.

Make Something Mondays - craft, bake, paint, build
Take a Trip Tuesdays - try a new park, museum, hike or activity
Wet and Wild Wednesdays - anything water related, pool, splash pads etc.
Thinking Thursdays - library, learning. experiments, practicing
Fabulous Fun Fridays - open day to pick anything fun to do together

After deciding on our schedule I made a big list of things to do including activities I know my kids like and choices from the summer buckets lists I'd pinned as inspiration. Almost all of our activities will be free or very low cost even our "trips".  Once that was done I started dividing the list into our "schedule".  This is my planning list, to keep us on track, not for the kids to see.

I also created another sheet that has a list of bonus activities - extra ideas to fill our days if needed, weekend activities - both scheduled and optional, and finally a list of "bored" activities I can suggest to the kids when they inevitably tell me they there is absolutely nothing to do! The bonus activities involve my participation while the "bored" list can be done individually with siblings.

I'm still deciding how to visually display our plan for the kids (it's not like school is over in two more days or anything - nothing like the last minute!). I thought about a take on an advent type calendar like we do for Christmas but I'm leaning towards just doing just one week at a time and using a card for each day that they can turn over and see what the activity for the day will be each morning. Once I actually create it I will try and remember to post it! My goal is to plan our week using my planning pages each Sunday when I do our family meal plan.  We will see how it goes.

I'm also still coming up with how to introduce this to the kids.  I'm thinking some type of celebration on the first day of our summer.  Any ideas?  Again, I've got lots of time to decide - you know a whole two days! 

Did you create a summer plan? bucket list? What's on your list? 

Happy Summer!  

Rebecca

Mini Moments or That's Why God Made Them Cute!

Ever had one of those days where it felt like the kids were crawling the walls or the fighting and whining would never end?  One of those moments where if you heard, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy" again your head would literally pop off?  Lately it's often my very destructive one year old that gets me wanting to tear my hair out.  If you hear silence, a scream or a crash you can pretty much be sure she is destroying something or beating on her almost 4 year old brother... again.

It's in the those moments, when let's face it you are really tempted to either A) Walk out the front door or B) follow Bill Cosby's comic wisdom and take them out of this world! Of course reality sets in and you realize you would never do either one of those but for that brief, brief fraction of a second when your last nerve's last nerve has been squashed on one too many times those thoughts do flash through your mind.  Or maybe that's just me???

It is in those moments that I always seem to say, "That's why God made them so cute!"  

Personally, I think I have some darn cute kids... 

Look at those two happy boys.  You gotta admit those smiles are pretty darn heart melting!  Bonus: my family room doesn't look like a tornado went through it either so I'm guessing company must have been coming over!

Baby girl rocking big brother's sunglasses and playing in her seat while I cleaned out my van one day.  Again - how could something so cute ever terrorize her brothers right? 

These are the mini moments of motherhood that I cherish.  They make up for those gross moments of cleaning carpets & car seats, the sibling fights that seem to never end and the whining that you can hear in your self!  These mini moments are what God gives us to remember how precious these little ones are and how lucky I am to be a mom.  After a few kids and a realization that one day the fighting, whining and destruction will stop, and my house will be empty, I've started to cherish these a little bit more! 

Yesterday I had one of those mini moments.  My little man coming home from preK all excited to tell me about Goldilocks & The Three Bears. School was a big transition for my 3 year old but just recently everything seems to be clicking and he is loving learning.  But honestly the best part - was his little voice saying the word porridge and explaining that they lived in a cottage, "which is like a whittle house". 

I'm hoping to start documenting these moments more and sharing.  What have been your mini moments this week? I'd love to hear!

Lessons learned from my kids: Prayer

I keep thinking of Noah, my 4 year old, prayer at Easter dinner.

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for Kat and Sally (our guests), Papa, Big Sissy, Sam, Baby Girl, Mama, me and for my powers and that I'm Electric Company Dinosaur and Jesus loves me.  Amen. 

As you can imagine there were several snickers, especially when he thanked Heavenly Father for his powers...

But in my heart I was happy.  Why?  Because Noah wasn't worrying about what anyone else thought. He was talking to God and thanking him for what was important to Noah.

There is a lesson in that for us all.  Prayer at it's most basic level is a conversation with God.  I want my children to learn reverence and respect. But I never want them to forget that through prayer they can build a personal relationship with their Heavenly Father.  I want them to know that he loves them and will always listen to them even if its about something someone else may consider silly.

It has also made me think about my prayers.  Do I really share what matters to me or do I say what I think I'm supposed to say or do.

My gratitude for Poopy Diapers

I guess the fact that spell check doesn't recognize "poopy" should convince me not to use it in a title but if you read on you will understand {hopefully}.

The other day was one of those days as a mom where finding the joy in motherhood didn't seem very easy.  In fact it felt more like my children were finding their joy in driving me nuts.

Now I should back up a bit.  I have 3 kids ages 4 and under and then a 17 year old stepdaughter that lives with us full time and all this happened in the last 6 years.  I continued to work full time for the first two years and then part-time as a Non-Profit Manager for several more until I recently chose to be home full time.  I've officially hit the 6 month mark as a work at home mom and most days there is at least one, if not many more, moments I long to go back to my office for even just a few minutes!  A few hours of adult interaction, using my professional skills, heck I'd even do budgets again, just for a moment of not having a small child attached to my hip and another one or two begging for my attention.

So this was where I was at the other day... and where the "poop" enters the story.

My 4 year old who is completely potty trained had an accident for the first time in months!  My 3 year old who is about 90% potty trained had to have used the floor instead of the potty at least twice and my infant daughter needed to be changed at least every 30 minutes {or that is how I felt}.   It was reaching dinner time, I was frazzled, my husband had just gotten home and was headed upstairs with the boys.  I grabbed my daughter to put her in her high chair and discovered she needed to be changed, again!

"You have got to be kidding me!" I cried out {and I'm only partially exaggerating here}...

I walked to the changing table and began the process of changing my daughter and then suddenly it hit me.

In the midst of feeling sorry for myself and annoyed at having to change another poopy diaper I looked down at my little girl's face.  

In that moment I realized I had this all wrong. Suddenly I stopped thinking about the diaper and really looked at this little baby.  

I thought for a minute how fast she is growing.  She was just 5 lbs when we she was born, so unexpectedly tiny I had to borrow premie clothing for her and yet almost 11 months later, on this day, she was just a few steps away from walking {she's now a few steps away from running!}.  I thought of my sons who every day amaze me with how big and grown up they are becoming.  I thought of my teenager who is just over a year away from going to college.  In that brief moment it suddenly hit me, that if in fact I got my wish for no more diapers, I would also no longer have a baby girl.  My gorgeous little Lucy Luc would be on to the next stage and my precious time with her as an infant would be gone.  

Maybe this doesn't make sense to anyone else but that realization, on that day, while changing what felt like the one millionth diaper of my life, has made me look at what used to feel like annoying or useless tasks just a little bit differently.  Because although some days it drives me crazy to hear "mommy, mommy, mommy..." all day long, I know there will be a day when they are much older where I will hope that just one time in a day they will need me and call "Mom".  In my six short years as a mom I have become to finally appreciate how fast these early years go and so for today I say... give me one more poopy diaper because that means I still have a sweet faced little baby.  A baby girl that I can snuggle, kiss and love on all I want. A baby with bright eyes and giggles that warm this mom's heart even in the dark hours of the night when I would rather be asleep.

So for today I am trying to remember this... the good always comes with the bad.  I may not like the diapers or the tantrums or the fighting between my little boys but I love the learning, growing, giggling, snuggles and those simple moments when one of them cuddles next to me and says, "Momma, I love you."

So because of the sweetness of those good moments, I'm learning day by day to accept the moments that aren't my favorite and remember that its my choice if I focus on the poopy diaper or instead focus on my daughter's sweet face.  It's my choice to show love even when I am tired because in the end I chose to be a mom and it is the best job in the world.

After all, how could looking at this face not be the better choice? {and yes those kicking feet are exactly what I get each and ever time, I thought I would share an authentic photo}