Growing time for Mama!

Ok I am in LA to "help" my sister-in-law have her baby (yes she came the day after I left) and I get a phone call from Marty a bit earlier than usual. 

Why?

W. was on his way to the ER.

Why you ask? 

He got hit in the head with a golf club!  A child's golf club but still.

My friends saved the day --Thank you Mary, Andrew and Mindy!

Marty got there just before the stitches went in.  The report I got was that he was very very brave!  I am so proud of him.  It was stressful not being able to be with my little one but it is always good for Mama to stretch!

 

He has a funny look on his face but you can see he is not traumatized!  I am so glad he is such a happy boy! 

I love you W.!

Changes

I have been thinking a bit the past two days about the changes we need and do make all the time.

Why?

Well for the past few months I have been going pretty hard and fast.  The past couple weeks even harder and faster.  As of yesterday morning I came to --ok trying too come to a screetching hault!  It is quite difficult to make the change.  I tell myself that it is good for me to chill a bit but I still find that I am wound up and wanting to do another project or two or maybe three or four.  You get the jist.  You see I am at my Sister-in-laws house hangin with them for a week.  Why am I here you ask?  Well she is expecting her 3rd baby any day now.  You see why I just need to wait -- and I am not even the one who is pregnant!  Hence the pondering of making changes.  I think that when I go home I must revamp how I spend my time. 

Another change is that I now have a blog to share all of the fun things going on in my life and I don't even have a camera to share them with.  Grrr!  Another shift I need to make.  I hope to catch y'all up when I get a new camera.

Thanks for letting me share my ponderings a bit.

Tuesday's Treat!

Ok so some of you may have heard of the adventure in the Hoffman house on Tuesday.  I was not here (very happy about that) during the real event but I get to participate in the remainder.

 What am I referring to you ask? 

Why the breaking and entering, buglary, ya know that kind of adventure!

I was only gone about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  I assume they were watching when I left and saw their chance.  Little did they realize that our house was the best one on the street to break into.  After all our 10yr old 26" TV is really a good find.  Not to mention the case of beans and maybe oatmeal from our storage.

Ok joking aside we really don't have much to take to take that the pawn shops are interested in.  Well obviously they didn't know us very well (that is comforting).

I let B. go into the house before me (don't the older kids always make it in first while Mom gathers everything up to take into the house).  W. was "coming in" very slowly so I ran in quickly set my stuff down, listened to the message we had and went back out to get him.  W and I went to the mailbox (just a couple houses down the street) and came in. Then it went something like this:

I looked at B. shooting hoops out on the patio and noticed a screen out on the patio.

"Odd.  Why did the kids do that?"

I saw a window was open.

"It had to have been J or J as B isn't strong enough to open it"  

"Hey that means it was this morning when it was cold and the heater was on"

"Grrrr"

I close the window and see that the "locks" are still in the "locked" position.

"huh?"

"Screen on patio, window open, broken locks...."

I start really looking around.

I see the sliding glass door frame is pulling away from the wall as if someone had tried to pry it open.

I look and see if our computer is still where I left it. It is!

"we couldn't have been robbed, our computer is still here...."

"Yes! You have been robbed.  Hello, the window was open, broken, and the sliding glass door has been tampered with...."

I look at the front door (which we never use) and it is open slightly.

"Oh gee! B., W. come out side with me please!  Don't touch anything!"

I called the police and the rest is history.

They were quite sloppy and they definitely missed some things (aka computer!) but it still is a pain.  Our biggest concern is they took our camera and now I don't have pictures to add to my blog!  Priorities here!

Just kidding!  Really our concern is the data they took, in the form of an old laptop (broken but data is still accessible) and a portable hard drive with a copy of all our files on it as backup.  And then it was pretty hard on the kids to have there "life savings" gone as well as J doesn't have his Ipod Nano that he just got for his birthday.  Grrr!

There are two very funny or rather ironic parts to the story.  We had 2 laptops (one worked the other didn't) and 2 Ipod shuffles (one worked and the other didn't).  They took 2 laptop and 1 shuffle.  They took the 2 that didn't work!  Hee hee hee!  That helped me laugh about it which helps a lot!

We are grateful that no one was home.  No one was hurt and that the house wasn't very damaged. We feel very blessed in the whole thing and that we still have our computer so Marty can still job hunt!

Jedi in Training

Ok, so it is dinnertime and I am calling for the kids to all come in to dinner.  I hear rustling behind me and am grateful they have come quickly.  As I turn around with plates full of food when I see

 

I had not seen W. dress up in the cloak before and was surprised to see it fit him so well. He is growing up so fast.  Marty would be so please to see that his youngling is training up in the ways of the Force.

 

May the Force always be with you W.

Love the Beard Man!

My husband is not a facial hair kind of guy.  This is a sad thing because he actually has enough that he can grow a decent beard in a decent amount of time.  I convinced him --I'm not quite sure how--I wish I knew. I would do it again-- to grow a beard for just a few days.  I thought each day that he would shave it off but he actually made it 9 days.  AMAZING!  Anyway I think he is so handsome I had to share a picture of him with all of you.

Thanks Honey!

PS Don't worry honey, you are handsome with out the beard too!

Snow or is it Ice?

Since the kids have never "been to the snow" we promised them that we would go last year.  So we went up on New Years Day to Flagstaff.  It was fun.  The kids were surprised to see that the snow was really Ice!  We informed them that snow isn't usually that hard or icy.  That is what happens when it has been a few days since it has snowed and the sun has been shining.

They were also surprised that it was so difficult making a snow man as well as snowballs.  They finally decided to just find a clump of ice--I mean snow and use that to throw instead. 

After many attempts at building a snowman we finally found one who was missing a head.  This sorry head was the best we could get (remember we had to find a clump already made as packing didn't work).

They discovered that sledding is really fun and can be quite dangerous.  Especially when there are large jumps (packed rock hard) and bumps (packed even harder) in your way.

We left after a couple days of fun, very happy and really needing some Chiropractic adjustments.  We look forward to a visit to fresh snow next winter.

Our Swimming Pool!

Living here in Sunny Arizona we often long for our own backyard pool.  We have a large part in our yard set aside for the day that dream comes true.  Until then we have used part of it for our garden.  Today when J. came home from school I showed her our new "swimming pool".

We decided that maybe we would wait to take a swim.  What do you think?

Do you want to try out our pool?

(The nasty white things are sheets that were covering our plants before they were blown off)