Happy Anniversary!

Yup.  8 years.  And it's a wonderful thing.

We celebrated this weekend by enjoying a kid-free weekend at home.  It may sound boring, but when you are accustomed to the noise and clutter of little ones, the mess-free, noise-free moments are wonderful.  So, while the kids enjoyed a fun-filled weekend with Mimi and Boppa, Adel and I got to use our newly remodeled game room.

The weeks prior to this we have been painting...

color-coordinating...

accessorizing...

shopping...

and hanging.

The chandelier still needs to be raised but I LOVE the new room and we used it a ton this weekend!

Since it was just the two of us, we ate our meals in there. Adel made some tasty burgers the first night.

The next morning, he treated me to homemade biscuits and omelets.

I also took a (short) ride with him on his motorcycle.  It was almost fun, except that the whole time I was picturing our death in various gory scenarios.  I don't think I'm free-spirited enough to be a biker chick...  unless of course the motorcycle had sides, and doors, and a roof, and seat belts, and air conditioning...then I would probably be able to relax and enjoy the ride a little bit!

For the most part, we played all the two-player card and board games we own (we even bought a couple new ones).  

We used to play games often before we had kids so this is a great way for us to feel that old connection again.  

It was a wonderful way to spend the weekend!  Love you, Adel!

Happy Father's Day!

I love my husband and my kids love their daddy.  We had a fun time celebrating him this weekend.

Isaac took his daddy out to an Astro's game along with Boppa and the other local guys in our family.  This picture is sideways and I can't figure out how to flip it but I LOVE the happy expression on Isaac's face as he munches on that popcorn and the proud look on Adel's face as he looks at his son at his first professional ball game.

Isaac was way more excited for the popcorn than for the game itself.  "We went to a baseball game," he said the next day.  "It was really boring."

This morning after church the kids were so excited for their dad to do the treasure hunt they had made.  First they showed him their map of the house.  

Daddy quickly found his first present: a new flashlight (we can't seem to hang on to one that actually works!).

Then he followed the map to his second present which he had to use his new flashlight to find.

Abby had fun helping him open it, saying, "Oh my goodness...look at all that tape!"  It's a collage poster of the shuttle launch we saw in April.

Finally, I did the same interview with the kids that I did for Mother's Day, except this time it was all about Daddy.  Both kids answered this one together for the most part:

1. What is something Daddy always says to you?
No

2. What makes daddy happy?
Being kind.
3. What makes daddy sad?
Crying.
4. How does your daddy make you laugh?
Hahahahaha.
5. What was your daddy like as a child?
Played video games.
6. How old is your daddy?

20 years old or 30 years old.  That's my guess.
7. How tall is your daddy?
2 hours.

8. What is his favorite thing to do?
Play video games.
9. What does your daddy do when you're not around?
He just sits there and does nothing.  He just sits there and does his work, I mean.
10. If your daddy becomes famous, what will it be for?
He will put his chocolate milk in his hair.
11. What is your daddy really good at?
Playing video games.
12. What is your daddy not very good at?
Flying an airplane.
13. What does your daddy do for his job?
He makes money.
14. What is your daddy's favorite food?
Chinese.
15. What makes you proud of your daddy?
Playing with me.
16. If your daddy were a cartoon character, who would he be?
Abby: R2D2.  Isaac: A Lego Man.
17. What do you and your daddy do together?
Play gameboy, video games, and Legos.
18. How are you and your daddy the same?
We have brown skin and the same eyes.
19. How are you and your daddy different?
Daddy has black hair and I have brown hair.
20. How do you know your daddy loves you?
Because he loves me.  I don't know much about love.

21. Where is your daddy's favorite place to go?
To Chinese food.

Where I Live

Last year I started drilling the kids on where they live.  What city do you live in?  What state?  What's the name of our neighborhood?  This time around I thought it was time for them to know their address.  We started, of course, with a trip to the library.  I didn't have much luck finding books that would encourage kids to know their address but this book called Me On The Map was super cool for helping them to understand where they fit in the great big earth, emphasis on maps.

Reading this book inspired us to draw a map the inside of our house.  I drew the walls and representations of the furniture and the kids did the coloring.  (You can see why I don't usually try to draw things.

Of course, once the kids were finished, they thought the next logical step was to hide a treasure and have someone use the map to find it.  Since it was so close to Father's Day, we hid Adel's gifts and on Sunday he'll have to use the map to find them. 

We also spend a lot of our car time this week chanting our address out loud together: "Now whisper it."  "Now say it."  "Now shout it!"  On the last day, I had the kids repeat our address one last time as I helped them label envelopes to send in the mail to themselves.

They each bought a $1 prize at the store to mail to themselves in their self-addressed envelopes.  

They are eagerly awaiting Sunday (Father's Day) so Adel can find his "treasure" AND Monday or Tuesday so they can finally receive the prizes that have been delivered back to them in the mail. 

A Happy Housewife?

Not desperate, bored, lonely, or overzealous.  Just Happy.  The question I asked myself when I was preparing to be a mom for the first time was, "Is there such thing as a happy housewife?"  Afterall, the Women's Lit I had read in college had pretty clearly defined a life as homemaker as a life of subservient bondage.  Even today, trying to find a portrait of happy domesticity is pretty difficult whether in literature, television, or movies.  Admittedly, it wouldn't make for great storytelling.  I get that.  But does it make for a good life?  After almost five completed years as a stay-at-home mom, I would have to say yes.

I'm not claiming this job is easy.  Some days the glamor of pursuing a career and hiring household help is very alluring.  Some days  my kids' behavior makes me want to hide under the covers in a fetal position with earplugs employed.  It's not easy, but it is very satisfying.  Through these years, I have cultivated a love of meeting the various needs of my family members (myself included).  These last couple years have been extremely rewarding for me.  But the journey here has not always been pleasant.

1

My first year as a stay-at-home mom was a pretty typical year of adjustment.  That year I learned how to create good balance between meeting my own needs and the needs of my husband and son.

2

My second year was exciting and busy (and stressful) with a move to Texas from California and preparing for baby #2.

3

Year three was the most difficult year of all as I struggled to stay afloat in meeting the needs of a newborn and a toddler.  Between trying to foster new friendships while hardly able to care for myself and my kids, putting my husband on a perpetual back burner, and battling long-term baby blues, this year was about as close as I ever got to being a desperate housewife!

4

The fourth year was a joyful surprise.  My kids (then ages 3 and 1) were suddenly so much easier to care for.   I had finally made a home for myself in Texas and was beginning to feel the effects of my earlier attempts to invest in new friendships.  I even made some small strides in bringing my husband back to the top of the totem pole, where he belongs.

5

And things have just kept getting better!  This past year, with a 2 year old and a 4 year old, I have had the kind of freedom that makes being a stay-at-home mom really rewarding.  My kids have grown in independence to the point where I'm able to focus now and then on the things that really interest me (like decorating my house, blogging, my husband, and my friendships).  I have grown in this job from the sense of being overwhelmed by meeting the needs of my kids to a sense of inspiration and creativity in the experiences I create for them.  I am loving it.

The kids playing "train" with our chairs.

As Abby has just turned three and Isaac is soon-to-be five years old, I am preparing to enter into year number six of this job. I think it would be appropriate to list the things that make being a stay-at-home mom so rewarding.  I want to do this to thank God for the blessings He has given me as a happy housewife.  I also want a record to remind myself in those inevitable moments of frustration, stress, or discontent, that I actually like doing this! This job is awesome because:

• I get to spend LOTS of time with my kids while they are so vulnerable, impressionable, and little (not to mention cute!).
• I get to be the first person to teach my kids about the world.
• My alarm clock in the morning is the voice of a child.
• I get to take a nap if I need one!
• I have the time to plan special occasions, outings, meals, and events for my children and my husband.
• I get to use my creativity and time to make this house a joyful home.
• In the moments when I'm not actively parenting or housekeeping, I can focus on my own interests.  
• I get to decide how our days and weeks are structured and scheduled.

Abby helping me mop the floor.

Stay-at-home friends, I'd love to have you add what you love about your job to my comments!  

Working-mom friends, I'm not at all knocking the working mom!  Being able to balance career and home life well is an art form in itself.  And there's something to be said about pursuing happiness outside of the home.  (Even as I wrote this paragraph, my charming daughter just dripped a trail off peepee from the office chair to the toilet!)  But, in this world where nothing is easy and no life without trials, I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate hardworking, happy housewives!

Anybody else out there fit that description?

New Recipe #8: Tomatillo and Black Bean Quesadillas

All my girlfriends know I love quesadillas.  But this one makes one of my favorite simple meals a little more nutritious with the addition of tomatillos and black beans.  You could go one step further and use wheat tortillas, but why ruin a good thing?  This recipe was adapted from Better Homes and Gardens: Fresh and Simple: 20-Minute Super Suppers.

3/4 cup coarsely chopped tomatillos 
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp olive oil
1 15-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
Flour tortillas
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese

In a large nonstick skillet cook and stir tomatillos and cumin in olive oil over medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes or until crisp-tender.  Add beans; cook and stir about 2 minutes more or until heated through.  Transfer to a bowl; set aside.

You can then use the same skillet to cook the quesadillas.  In case you're unfamiliar with how to do so, here's a quick run down: toss a tortilla on a heated skillet, throw on a handful of cheese, add tomatillo-bean mixture, top with a second tortilla.  I like to serve it with a side of fresh guacamole.  Admittedly, I serve the kids theirs as plain bean and cheese.  I plan to slowly over time sneak the tomatillos and spice into their servings too.

Our scores:
Adel - 8/10 good with a big heap of sour cream, salsa, and homemade guac.
Megan - 10/10 can't beat melted cheese
Isaac - 8/10 picks out the beans first (mom makes him eat them); then eats the quesadilla
Abby - 10/10 anything for an excuse to eat sour cream

Summer Outfits

My talented friend Celeste has done it again.

This time, my family commissioned summer outfits for the kids.

We had the 4th of July bike parade in mind but also wanted the kids to be able to wear the outfits all summer long.  

So Celeste used red, white, and blue as the color scheme but stayed away from traditionally patriotic patterns.

The girls got these adorable ruffle shirts and very light-weight bloomer-shorts.

Isaac, our only boy, got coordinating colors and a appliqué neck-tie t-shirt.

These pictures where taken at the Angleton Sunflower Festival (it sounded a lot more fun than it turned out to be, but it was still a good location for a photo shoot!).

Thanks Celeste, for the made-to-order outfits!  

Thanks Mimi and Boppa, for helping dress the kids so stylishly!

Celeste's Esty sight is: www.sweetpeaplusthree.etsy.com

My Space Man

An awesome, cool-enough-to-be-an-astronaut friend of ours recently took Adel on a first class tour of Johnson Space Center.  Adel attends meetings there regularly, but there are still many places that he does not have clearance to go.  Well, on this tour, he went there.  They got to walk on the pool deck of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (the big swimming pool where the astronauts train), and they saw some divers moving underwater equipment around to set up for the next astronaut training.

They saw all the mission control centers as well as the Soyuz Trainer.  Adel's favorite part was the Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS) which is a motion simulator where Adel got to practice flying lift off, ascent, and a return to launch site abort.  Adel did great on his manual piloting and landing, but he was a little light on the brakes, almost overshooting the runway.

This is a picture my friend sent me of Adel in the Crew Compartment Trainer (CCT1), where astronauts practice the layout and orientation of the shuttle components:

Thanks Mac and Evan, for this amazing experience!

Money, Money, Money!

Our theme for this week was...you guessed it...money.  We started by finding some library books.  One Cent, Two Cents, Old Cent, New Cent is a good introduction to money (history of, how it's made...).  Like many informative books, it is a little over Isaac's head, so I reserve the right to pick and choose which sections I read.

Money Madness by David Adler does a good job of explaining how money is used.

Then we made a quick game of memory by sticking pairs of coin stickers on note cards.  You could easily do the same by just taping real coins on note cards.

Playing memory with coins was actually Abby's idea and turned out to be a good way to help them practice saying the names of each coin and matching same-type coins together.

Then we got entrepreneurial and set up our own Lemonade stand.  Isaac colored in the sign and helped mix the sugar into the fresh-squeezed lemonade.

  Abby and Isaac enjoy an ice pop on the house while waiting for our first customers.

Customers!  Thanks to the friends who came out to support my kids' first attempt at business!

We did a lot of other small activities with money this week but honestly I think the most valuable for Isaac was sitting there playing with the coins while he waited for customers.  We played little games while we waited: How many pennies are in a quarter?  Find all the dimes. Put the coins in order from lowest to highest worth.  Which one is worth five pennies?

I ended up making a chart using those coin stickers to help the kids remember how much each coin is worth.  For now, we stopped at a dollar, because it's going to be a while before they need to know the bigger bills.  That's for the next lesson!

Finally, I have been inspired by this week's theme as well as by a few of my friends who are teaching their young children to value of money by earning it themselves.  So I created a chore chart where the kids can see how much they will be paid for each chore they do.

Adel said, "You're only giving them a penny for feeding the dog?"  Well, I figured since they fight over who gets to do this one anyway, I'd set the price low. (Something had to be worth a penny, right? Just so I could use all the different coins for educational purposes!)

The kids were actually really excited about starting their chores (which is good, because I plan to spend tomorrow cleaning the house!).  In the meantime, these two hard workers deserved a break:

Princess Party

Last night we made cupcakes for Abby's 3rd birthday.  

Abby's favorite part:

Then we decorated.

Some newborn memorabilia.

While waiting for some friends to arrive, the kids got a jump start on decorating their crowns.

She's ready for the party.

With her prince.

Aw, come on, I won't be able to get them to do this much longer...too sweet.

Friends arrive and start to get festive too.

Daddy cooked up some crown quesadillas and scepter fruit sticks.

After lunch the girls made edible necklaces.  

Mmm...sugar!

Eight little princesses all in a row.

While waiting for cupcakes...more sugar.

We made a platter with princess fruit snacks and other candies for the kids to decorate their cupcakes.

Opening presents.

Two princesses.

Big brother, who woke up at 5am too excited to go back to sleep, was worn out by the end.

Dear friends who helped celebrate Abby's 3rd birthday, thank you for coming and please forgive the sugar overload I know all the girls experienced!