Valentine's Day 2009

Finally here is Valentine's Day for the kids, nothing major this year, I gave them their little pillows with a little toy and this "beary" special Valentine's lunch. It was a bear face, can ya tell? Not really but they liked it.

Along with the lunch was a matching card that I found and printed off of Sugardoodle. I think I will do this every year. Jonas and I each filled one out for both Shay and Jazzie. It had things that we love about them. It was fun to think about what I love about them, and we can keep them to remember.

And I forgot to take a picture of this but Shay and DH were very thoughtful and brought home a pretty pink carnation for each of us girls.

A Day in the LIFE of Taye

What does a 3 month old have to say about being in our household? hmm...

"I'm a very serious kind of guy and I love my binky...




I don't like to be left alone...it makes me scared...

The older kid likes to take good care of me. He rocks me and plays with me and he even reads me books...

The girl also likes to take care of me. She sings and dances for me too. Lately she has started to tote me around in her baby stroller, and while I do enjoy seeing the sites...

sometimes it scares me!!

she can't help it though, since I am so darn cute...

And don't worry because soon I am going to chase them both!"

A Day at the Beach!

Earlier this month we decided to escape this cold weather and head to the beach. It was a Tuesday and we surprized the kids that morning "surprise! you are not going to school today". We figure everyone needs a break sometimes, I know I do!

It was such fun and we practically had the entire beach to ourselves.

Pretty much the only thing we did was have lunch, go buy sand toys at the local Walmart, and head to the sand. The kids were in heaven and it was in the mid 80's!

Jonas' creative juices were flowing

And I discovered that playing with sand was very cathartic. I haven't gotten down in the sand and played at the beach since I was a kid and it totally reminded me of going to all the fun beaches back east as a kid, Virginia Beach, Atlantic City, etc. (btw, the baby was sleeping in the stroller the whole time!)

We decided that we would make going to Pinkberry our new tradition since we went there last time and it is sooo good. And so will going to this huge mountain of sand:

which is the same one from last year:

Year of the Yoga!

I read somewhere that 90% of people break their New Year's Resolutions before Valentine's Day....

so does it increase my chances if I don't start my resolution until after Valentine's Day?

I decided I wasn't going to do a huge list this year like last year (not that it wasn't right for last year). This year I am taking a more simplified approach.

My word for 2009 is going to be ~Balance~ and I am going to work on this in the literal and figurative sense.

This is going to be the year of the Yoga! I have wanted to experiment with this for some time now, since it goes hand in hand with the meditation/relaxation exersizes I love to do. My goal is to set aside a few minutes each day to meditate and breathe. I need this! I am going to involve the kids in this goal, we used to do this together and they loved it. But we stopped taking the time.

As has been the case before, I was procrastinating writing this post so that I would not be accountable, but not anymore. I need to balance things things that occupy my time better.
Burning in my mind is something that I heard at education week last year. I don't know the speakers name because she wouldn't let us take notes, but she was talking about the kinds of evil that enters our lives. She said that most of us will never really be tempted to starting drinking alcohol, take drugs, or murder someone etc. But the evil that does enter our lives is being too busy. Sounds pretty harmless right? Yeah it did to me too, but she talked about running around being "too busy" all the time and doing too much (including not saying no) to really focus on what is most important. That really stuck with me and is the basis for this year's goal. Balance.