Decorate your own bucket! I made one for each of my kids and nephew for Easter. It’s easy and it’s fun! Get a good bucket and a few paint pens and go! I used the book I Can Draw Animals, an Usborne book. I bought the book for my kids, but I have gotten more use out of it! They have other I Can Drawbooks as well. I’m thinkin’ I may want to stock up! Joel painted part of his too… I’m thinking next year I won’t be so greedy and let them do their own:)
Monthly Archive for May, 2004Page 2 of 3
A friend put a baby shower together for another friend. She is good about delegating! I offered to make the invitations. So began my journey for something sweet and memorable. I wanted to create an original keepsake for the mom-to-be. I must have gone through a dozen ideas (even die-cut twenty four baby bathtubs believing I decided on the invitation layout). However, nothing really “felt” right. Then one evening I went to yet another store. I was looking for the perfect rubber ducky stamp. I found ducks, but not necessarily RUBBER ducks (oh - the shower theme was rubber ducky, by the way). I continued to wander and stumbled across itty-bity hangers. Epiphany!
I never did find that rubber ducky stamp, but I learned that a couple dots of yellow acrylic paint on a cut-up dishtowel can really look like a duck! Hot glue on a little strip of ribbon and voila! The “assignment” was fun and I was able to create something original. I usually copy the ideas of others (some say I’m creative, but I am am just very good at copying!) so this was a fun project because I was able to accomplish my goal in originality. I’m sure something like this exists somewhere, but I never saw it!
I am so blessed! On Sunday morning Joel brought me breakfast in bed. He called it, “breakfast in your bed”. He told me it was because it was my “Muvers Day” and I ran fast at the race. He brought me Cocoa Puffs (I’d say about 24 puffs floated in a very full bowl of milk), a banana, and who can forget the cotton candy for dessert!!! (The cotton candy was left over from the Viking Fest carnival). He also place a toy on the tray and made a little card (an envelope with his name written on it). I have to say, the official Mother’s Day was great (one of the best), but Joel’s decision to have another was truly a treat. He worked so hard to get it ready and was so eager to treat me special.
Joel, you are a remarkable boy with and incredible heart! Thank you for showing me love, with both your words and your actions. I am blessed to have you for my son…
What a guy! On Saturday (the 15th) You ran your first race! It was 25 yards long and you took off like a pro! There were quite a few kids there, so the organizers split the race up into 2 waves of girls and one boys wave. However, as in your common fashion, you zoned in on the task of GOING! Forget the order of things, the minute you heard “GO”, you took off!
I wasn’t quite ready for your take-off, so the best picture I got of you actually running, was of your back - and barely. You are so fast!! At the end of the race you were given a ribbon, and you even got your own water bottle and orange slice - just like mom did!!! Way to go buddy!
Saturday was the Viking Fest Road Race. I signed myself up for the 5 mile run, and signed Joel up for the 25 yard run for 4 & 5 year olds! My race started at 9 am. Joel’s “race” was scheduled to begin at 10:15. I was concerned… I hadn’t run or exercised at all for over a week. By race day, my goal was to finish my race in time to see Joel’s! OK - that would give me one hour and 15 minutes…
A little encouragement helps… one house near the start had their speakers out. They blared “Chariots of Fire” as we began. With a little under a mile from the finish, the race route took us by the same house, only this time they were playing the theme song from the Rocky movie. I was surprised at the emotional push their humor and cheers gave me!
The end is in sight. I saw my family, and managed to give Joel a quick peck before crossing the finish line:) I was surprised to see the time at the finish line was 49:45! That means my average was 10 minutes per mile. I am happy with that (my treadmill average is 10:30 to 10:50 a mile)! I finished in time for Joel\’s race… plus I finished well-ahead of the group of teenage girls (about 8) I had run with most of the way! I focused on a steady running pace (it is probbably more of a jog for REAL runners), while the girls opted to run AND walk (I overheard them working ourt their strategy). There were a few times I thought I would not gain the ground I needed, however…it seems… slow and steady really does win the race!
Yeah, so I didn’t really win the race (I came in 221 out of about 285…), but I am happy with my performance. I improved my personal time, got to see my son run his first race, and I finished before a few healthy young people to boot:)
Just needed to add a little p.s. to a previous post titled E-cards by Joel. Yesterday, Joel’s friend Connor replied to Joel’s VeggieTales e-card. I just had to copy it into here! He wrote (with mom’s help, as you will read…):
Dear Joel - I want to give you a spider man mask, a digiman CD and a sucker and a gun. That’s it and a spider man gloves to go with the spider man mask and a web that is in a can that shoots out of the can and that’s it. I said that’s it. That’s it mom. I said you need to stop when I said that’s it.
You just can’t make this stuff up!
Have you ever been angry? I sure have, and I’m NOT proud of it. I am learning that this is not a struggle limited to me. Gina wrote about Anger too. Her entry caused me to become very emotional because I have so been there. The last few paragraphs are particularly moving…
The said truth is that, well, I HATE being The Angry Woman. The Angry Woman is the pissy bitch on line in front of you, making a big deal about the price of gas. The Angry Woman is in the coffee shop, with her coffee too cold and her doughnut too hard. The Angry Woman is in gym, unable to understand why you can’t get the $!*# out of her way, don’t you understand she’s late for kickboxing? The Angry Woman neatly reminds you that it’s YOUR fault that she hasn’t paid her bills on time, and you have no right to refuse her service.I don’t like that woman, but I can see her in myself. Not at the store or the gym, but in my home. She doesn’t yell at random strangers, she yells at her husband, and oh, yea, she yells at herself. She calls herself stupid, fat, lame, useless, a Moron. Lately, she’s needed to throw things or bang a fist into something.
I hate her, and I damn well don’t want her to live here any more. If only I knew how to get her to move the hell out, I would.
Gina states it perfectly. Thank you for sharing your heart. We are not alone in this struggle — this battle. By the way, I do have a great book to recommend: She’s Gonna Blow!: Real Help for Moms Dealing With Anger by Julie Ann Barnhill… it is a great book. I read it quite sometime ago, and need to read it again….
I love reading Julie Leung’s blog. She write on diverse topics and has a beautiful writing style. She’s smart, she nearly became a doctor! Some of her topics are a bit intellectual for my thick head, but I thoroughly enjoy the challenge and opportunity to stretch. One of my favorite entries has to do with being a mom. It’s called Triple Scoop Cone. In it she writes,
There are moments of motherhood like ice cream. Like eating a raspberry sherbet cone while sitting outside on a sunny day. It’s intense. It’s slow and sweet. And then, before I know it, it’s gone.
Yesterday, she wrote The denial of our mammalian nature. This is a good read! What she wrote in the last paragraph was, what I feel to be powerful and very thought-provoking:
I find it ironic that our culture celebrates the female body with its curvaceous shape that is suited for particular childbearing functions. Now the navel has become fashion, adorned for adoration, pierced and bejeweled. What is a bellybutton but a reminder of the physical connection to a mother - and her intense investment?! We celebrate breasts, we celebrate navels but we don’t celebrate or encourage the investment a mother must make into her children: instead we deny the biology that gave her her body.
That is what Livi calls toothpaste. So cute!
I’ve pirated JennyOntheSpot for a few minutes because I have to tell you something. Jenny is a gift to me.
Every day, there’s a moment or two that I almost can’t stand up — like the day after our first kiss. She’ll work up some outfit to wear for all the running around she’s planned for the day — there is no such thing as grubbies when they’re keeping my Jenny from the weather. I’m her husband… no matter where we are or who we’re with. When we’re apart? I’m even more her husband, and no one better mess with my woman.
My kids have a great mommy. They know it. You can feel it in the words she writes on these pages.
Happy Mother’s Day, Jenny. One day is all I ask. ;)
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