Lot's of things

Ya know, I really should get better about blogging in short posts more often instead of waiting weeks then having one gigantic post! So I will try to keep it as short as I can.

First of all, potty training! Oh, how I hate these words. Jaycee was actually pretty easy to train. For a whole week, we just let her go nakey-bottom, put the potty out where it was easy to get to, and told her what to do. She just got it! Has hardly had any accidents since. She was right around 2.5, which is Joslyn's age right now. So I had the bright idea to really buckle down and try to get her trained. Unfortunately, she is waaaaay more stubborn than Jaycee. She knows how to use the potty. She has done it many times, when she wants to. But most of the time she doesn't want to! She will just squat in the floor and go, standing right beside her potty. Sometimes she decides that she wants a peice of candy enough to actually use the potty. Whatever. For now, I think I am just going to let it go and see what happens. It's too frustrating for both of us for me to force her. Oh, but I did get the obligatory sitting on the potty shot, so that I can use it to embarass her in the future:

Like I said, what's worked for us is putting the potty in a common area where she will sit on it often. Yes she is watching tv lol.

Then I guess after that, came father's day weekend. Saturday the 19th we went to my childhood friend's wedding. There were 4 of us that were really close, and she is the last one to get married. Now we are really all grown up I guess, hah! Another one of us is going to have her first baby next week, after years of struggling with infertility! I am so happy for her and can't wait to see her little miracle. Sunday, father's day, the girls and I went to church (Justin has been working crazy hours and stayed home to sleep) then we all went to lunch then over to Justin's dad's. The girls love going over there. They have a garden, and tons of room to run and play. They got out the little baby pool for the girls to play in. It's so amazing how much fun kids can have with the simplest things.

The also love the horsey swing. Here's Justin, his dad, and silly girl Jaycee.

This week was pretty busy. Mops playdate, Mops steering team meeting. After the meeting on Thursday I got to have lunch with a girl from church, Wendy, and her adorable little boy Isaac. Wendy is one of the sweetest people I know and I love spending time with her!

Mostly I've just been very busy feeling like a single mom b/c of Justin's work schedule. This pay period he will have worked 136 hours in 2 weeks. That is crazy! A lot of it was back to back shifts too. Like he would work 3pm-3am, then 8am-4pm, then 11pm- 7am. I am glad that he has a job, but wow is it hard having young kids and him working so much. Not to mention, that even with that much overtime we are still struggling to get by. That's so frustrating! But I am thankful for everything we have, and know that God will take care of us.

Oh, also I saw the rheumatologist last week, forgot about that. The good news is, i'm not doing any worse! The bad news is, i'm not doing any better. So for now no hope of getting off of the steroids. Maybe someday!

Today I took the girls swimming at the pool at creekmore. Usually, I like to only swim at the fitness center b/c it's indoors and I really have trouble being in the sun. But, they only have certain times when kids can swim, so we had to find an alternative today! I hadn't taken them there yet, so at least it was new and exciting, oh and cheap! Jos didn't enjoy it too much. I think she's just not a big fan of swimming. Jaycee is like me though, she would spend all day in the water. One way she isn't like me is that she is totally fearless. They have a diving board, and really by most standards it isn't huge, but it's taller than her. She was determined to jump off of it, and there was no stopping her. So, I told her she could do it but she had to wear her life jacket. She has been swimming good without it, but this was a big deep pool and a high jump! So she got in line, then climbed up and jumped! She looked so tiny up there! What's really funny is, my mom has some almost identical pictures of my older brother when he was little tiny jumping off the diving board. Anyone who knows Jay, knows he has always been considered very daring and well, somewhat crazy! My mom is always telling me there are so many similarities between them and it scares me! I totally admire my brother for having the courage he does. But it's different when it's my baby!

Doesn't that water look refreshing?? This heat has been awful. I would give just about anything for a pool of my own! Oh and speaking of warm weather, I made my favorite summer food yesterday, pasta salad! I'm such a dork, and thought it looked so pretty and colorful that I took a picture lol!

What's in it, you ask? Tri-colored veggie pasta, cheddar cheese, cherry tomatoes, red and yellow bell peppers, onions, mini turkey peperoni, and lite Italian salad dressing. Notice how I didn't give any amounts for the ingredients. Yeah, that's b/c it always depends on my mood, or what I have on hand! My kids love this stuff, and Justin does too. I like to make a huge batch and eat it for lunch during the week.

Have a good weekend everyone! Love-Jasmin

Random thought #1

Just a thought for today....

You know what's sad? Grandparents wanting to see their grandchildren but they can't. And, grandparents that could see their grandchildren, but they don't.

I love these faces.....

Have a good day everyone.

Love-Jasmin

Cheap Summer movies

Just found this and thought I would share it with you other mamas out there! Van buren isn't all too far away, and the kids love the movies. And even if they don't behave, what the heck, it's only 2$ per ticket!! If you don't live near Van Buren, check the Malco website and scroll down and click on kids summer movies to see if there is one closer to you that is participating.

http://dlogic.net/malco/kidshow/vanburen.gif

Vacations, parties, and more!

Well folks, it's been awhile since I have written. I am trying to remember everything that has happened! When I last left you, we had just finished our trip to Hot Springs. The following week was spent recovering, doing laundry, and getting the house back in order! Then, we decided that since we would be going to Tulsa to pick up Justin's brother, that we would stay overnight and try and find something fun to do. So Justin asked off from work for the 2 days so we could have plenty of time to enjoy each other. We were all set to have a great time!

Then, issue #1 came about. Work called and said Justin had to come in on Sat from 7-3. Ugh, we weren't happy, but at least it wouldn't stop our trip! Then, on Friday afternoon, issue #2. As I was doing laundry and packing for the trip, my clothes dryer went out! I was on my last load of laundry and it quit heating! Thankfully, my awesome mom offered to stop by and get the laundry and dry it for me at home and bring it back. Sat morning, I got up early and took Justin to work, so that afterwards I could pick him up and we could leave from ft smith cutting about 30 min off our trip! I got us all packed, dressed, and ready to go and we left to pick him up. I got halfway to town, and realized I had forgotten a few important things, like the directions to the hotel and Joslyn's blankie! So I turned around and came back home for them, then set out again. As I got to ft smith, I realized that I also forgot to pack any shoes for the girls. All they had were the ones on their feet! Jaycee's were her worn out toy story flip flops, and Jos was wearing hand me down pink crocs that were filthy. So we hurried and stopped at payless to get them both some shoes. It actually worked out well, b/c they both needed new church shoes for the summer anyway. Then, we finally picked up daddy and headed out.

We got to the hotel first and the girls were so excited that "they had a pool inside!" as Jaycee told everyone. Also, they were obsessed with the elevator. Jaycee kept saying something about the alligator, see the alligator. I told her no, that was in a different city b/c I thought she was talking about the alligator farm. Turns out she was trying to say elevator! They would fight over who got to push the buttons on it. As soon as we got there we swam for a little while in the little pool at the hotel. Joslyn actually lost some of her fear of the water, and would jump in! I think it was b/c it was small and very warm. Jaycee was jumping in and swimming all around. She has really become a good swimmer this summer! After that, we went to our room to get dressed to go to dinner. Here's how bad of a mom I am, I didn't take any pics of the girls in their adorable dresses! But I promise we did actually all look nice, heh. Then, bad thing #3. We walk outside to get in the van, and it has a flat tire! Poor Justin was all showered and dressed and looking nice, and now he had to change a tire. So he put the little donut tire on, and we drove to dinner very slowly, getting passed and honked at lol. But, we finally made it to the cheesecake factory! Oh wow, was it ever worth it. Our food was so yummy, especially the cheesecake! Then we went back to the hotel to try and sleep. I say try, b/c well, it didn't happen. I guess Jaycee wasn't used to all of the swimming and going underwater, and must have gotten water in her ears, b/c she screamed most of the night that her ear hurt :/ It was awful!

We did finally manage to get a little bit of sleep. After breakfast and loading up the car, we headed to the aquarium. It was great! The girls loved seeing all of the fish, especially the "nemo" fish. Jos was terrified of the sharks though! She screamed her head off when we tried to take her into the tunnel through the shark tank. After that, we headed to Justin's aunt Susan's house to pick up Chase. We had a good time chatting with Susan and her girls, and Jaycee and Joslyn loved playing with them! They are so sweet. Susan took Justin to Walmart to get our tire fixed, and thankfully it just needed a small patch job! Finally we loaded up everyone and headed home.

Chase stayed with us the whole week! I love having him around. He is really a great kid. He plays with the girls, and helps me with them anytime I ask. We watch movies and talk, and he is good company when Justin has to work in the evening. We decided that we were going to throw his mom (also Justin's mom) a suprise birthday party on Saturday when they came to pick up Chase. So we spent a lot of the week planning, shopping, and cooking for the party. The party was a great success.

Justin's mom, aunts, grandma and grandpa around the table:

I wish I would have taken a picture of the inside of the cake. We used 1 strawberry cake, and then I colored a white cake purple. So when cut into it was bright pink and purple! It was really cute.

Afterwards we took the girls to the park to ride the train, then came home and let them play in the yard on their slipnslide and with their sprinkler. It was so funny watching Jaycee trying to figure out the slip n slide. I think they prefered just running through the water!

Oh, and also last week Jaycee had her first gymnastics class! She absolutely loved it. I was so proud of her, she was so brave during everything! I think we may have found something she likes.

Isn't the little leotard just the cutest thing every? She is very proud of it!!

And, here are just some random pictures of her I took. She was being a "summer cowgirl". I love her poses, she's such a little camera ham!

Gorgeous isn't she?? Then of course Jos got jealous. So she put on her new outfit, and her boots, and made me take pictures. But, she wouldn't look at me or smile! She is such a drama queen! But isn't this outfit adorable? It's layette sized gymboree, but I shoved her in the 24m size, heh.

Look at the back, it has wings!!! Though she keeps calling them boobies lol.

It will probably be outgrown in a few weeks the way she is growing, and I will have to sell it, sigh. So ladies, let's start the bidding! Mama needs a new pair of shoes! Hah!

I am enjoying being with my girls, but will be glad when we get back to having lots of activities. The girls get bored a alot and fight a ton. It's too hot a lot of the time to be outside. Even Jaycee said "mama, I wish it would snow again, I don't like summer!" I said me too, sweetie. I think we need to win the lottery and build a pool.

Love to all-Jasmin

It's a long way down the Holiday Road, oooooohhhhh

Ok, I think I can manage to put together a post now. Not that i've had any rest, more like i've just had more time to think about what to write! This could get rather long, so if you have been easily bored by me before, you can leave now, I won't get upset. Go on. Really, it's ok.

Ok, anyone still here? Great!!! I guess I should start with last Wednesday. Wow, over a week ago! That day was our last day of MOP's/mops party, and JAycee's last day of preschool party. And, of course, these 2 things were scheduled to happen at exactly the same time. So my plan was to go to JAycee's party for the first hour, then to the mops party. Well, it almost worked! We ended up a little short on childcare at mops, so I had to stick around a bit to make sure all the kiddos were well taken care of. When releif arrived, I snuck out to Jaycee's party for a bit, and managed to catch her trying to sack race. It was hilarious! Then I sent her off with the rest of the MOP's kids and headed over to the meeting. I managed to make it in time to socialize a little bit! The only problem was, that even though I went to 2 parties that had food, I still managed to get nothing to eat! How does that happen??

After all that, it was time to head down to Becca's! Becca has been my friend for many years. Since 6th grade I think? She is one of the sweetest and strongest people I have ever met. She has overcome more challenges in her life than anyone should ever have to, and she always makes it through. I love spending time with her. Oh, and she's an awesome cook! When we were younger, we would always watch sappy chick flick movies and eat death by chocolate ice cream. Now that we are old mommies, we can't stay awake long enough, lol. We had a blast staying with them for a couple days. She took us to see the new house they are building which is going to be gorgeous! We also took the kids to eat and play games at chuckie cheese in Little Rock, where Joslyn decided she was going to hold herself hostage in one of the plastic tube playthings. Becca managed to get in there and pull her out. Then we went to babie's r us to drool over adorable baby stuff. I am such a slacker and didn't even get any pics of the 3 girls together! Becca's daughter Jaelin is 4, and she and JAycee are just 3 months apart in age. All 3 girls love playing together, and we just laugh at them. Oh, and did I mention she's pregnant and having a baby boy??? I can't wait to meet him. I can share a pic with you that relates though! This is Becca and Jaelin last spring. We were eating at a restraunt before taking Jaelin and Jaycee to Disney on ice:

And the girls:

They have changed so much since then!

Justin called me Thursday and said that he thought he would actually be getting done with training early, and might be home at noon on Friday! So Friday morning we said bye to Becca, and headed back home. Sure enough, he got home early! And we realized, that this was the first time in months that he would have a whole weekend off, and thought we needed to take advantage of it. So we made some plans to go to Hot Springs for the weekend. This is a pretty special place for us, as it's where we went on our honeymoon! We also went back for several years after that on our anniversary, and we went right before he was deployed to Iraq. We thought it would be fun to take our kids to a place that was so special to us. We didn't end up leaving untill after 5 on Friday night, then of course ran into all of the traffic from people trying to get to the lake! But we finally made it to our hotel. We unloaded the van, and saw that there was still enough time to take a dip in the pool. So we went for a little swim, and Jaycee thought it was so awesome that she didn't have to wear suncreen, hah!

Girls on the hotel bed. This was their first time in a hotel!

And this was so funny. Since they only had rooms with one bed, we had to figure out where for everyone to sleep. Joslyn slept in the paknplay, and I thought we could just get a rollaway bed for Jaycee. But my husband, being the McBride that he is, wasn't about to pay 10$ for that! So he loaded Jaycee mattress and bedding in the back of the van and we took it with us! Thankfully it's just a toddler bed mattress, so it fit between the wall and bed. But she thought it was just the neatest thing ever!

Sat morning we were ready and raring to go. After hotel breakfast and a quick walk of the dogs (oh yeah, did I mention the dogs had to come with us? yup, all 6 of us on vacation, woot woot) we were off. Our first destination was the alligator farm. The kids weren't as impressed as we had hoped, except for by the turkeys. They thought they were great. Oh and they liked petting the baby alligator. Joslyn filled the back pocket of the stroller with rocks during the feeding show, if that gives you an idea as to how impressed they were.

Daddy and girls seeing the turkeys :

Jaycee was at least sort of interested in the gators:

After that, off to lunch indoors to cool off and re-energize! Girls afterwards waiting on daddy:

Then it was off to the Mid-America Science museum. As a child, my mom and grandma took my older brother Jay and I here several times, and I had great memories from it! I knew the girls would just love it, and they did. Well, most of it. Joslyn was totally terrified of the dinosaur exhibit! She screamed like she was being tortured!

I love this picture. This was a thing that sort of showed them how gravity worked, but of course they had no idea and just played. But it captures their personalities so well!

Girls and daddy helping out with an experiment:

Mini golf at pirate cove. Justin and I went here on our honeymoon, and have pictures in the same spots. It's really awesome to see how much our family has changed.

After that, back to the hotel for more swimming, and then put 2 exhausted babies to bed!

On sunday, well I was a total ditz and didn't bring the camera with us when we went out, oops! We went to a little aquarium, then for a walk around downtown to look in the shops. Then we ate some lunch and headed home! The kids and I slept most of the way, at least untill we saw the familiar blue lights in the rear view mirror. I told Justin I think that from now on, anytime we go on a trip I need to budget in the cost of a speeding ticket, b/c it just seems inevitable that he will get one. Sigh.

Monday Justin had to work, and the girls and I were so worn out that we pretty much didn't do anything! Tuesday, I had lunch with mom, b/c I felt like I hadn't seen her in forever. Then we went to flame gymnastics to sign Jaycee up for summer classes. She is so excited! She was upset when we were there b/c she thought she was going to start classes that day. I told her sweetie, you don't have class untill Tuesday! She said, I can't go on tuesday, I have to go on threes-day b/c i'm 3! This kid, I tell ya. Then we went to get her a leotard, and she's so tiny that even the smallest ones were baggy on her! But we got it anyway and hopefully she will grow into it.

Yesterday, I drove to magazine to pick up my grannie. She has been sick lately and had an appointment to see her oncologist up here. This woman is 85 years old, has had cancer twice, a house fire, was unable to have children, her husband passed away 20 years ago, and yet she is still going. She amazes me sometimes. She stayed here at our house and had dinner, then I took her to the store and to mom's. Today, mom took her to the Dr, and she eneded up having to be kept there to get IV fluids, so mom and I went to lunch with the girls. Then, I had to drive her back to magazine, and come home and get together the meal I had put in the crock pot to take to our mentor mom from mops. Mr's Harriet is so sweet, and she and I share a love for reading. Several times after mops, I would run into her at the library and we would talk about the books we were getting. One of the first things she asked me when I dropped of her meal was "what are you reading now?" She seemed to be doing well and she and her husband were greatful for the meal, though it wasn't much! Since was had a long day, I threw a roast and some veggies in the crockpot this morning, and then made a loaf of bread in the bread machine. It did smell good! And I took the kids with me to drop off the food, and it seemed to cheer Mr's harriet up to see them. It made me feel great to help out Mrs Harriet and my grannie today. To give myself, my time and energy, was not easy but so rewarding. Acts 20:35 says
"In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” And I do feel blessed today.

Ok, well, if you read all of that, you deserve a cookie or something. Unfortunately, I live with 3 cookie monsters, so have none to give, but it's the thought that counts right? We are headed to Tulsa this weekend to pick up Justin's brother, my awesome brother in law chase! I am excited about his visit. Stay tuned!

Love to all-Jasmin