Funny

It's funny how I kind of disappear when Ryan's home:). I don't get nearly as much done either.
Kaylee and I had a lot of fun yesterday. We took Ryan to the Plainfield office for some meetings and instead of driving home and back we decided to stay in Plainfield to have some lunch and do some shopping. That little girl is quite the shopper! We didn't even make it to Metropolis-which was part of our plan. We shopped at Wal-Mart, Target, Kohl's, Icing, Hallmark, TJ Maxx, and Kohl's again. That itself took us over three hours! My little helper!

As a sidenote-I haven't gotten any farther on my book. But I did want to mention that it isn't going to be a "This is how you should punish your children to get them to behave" book. Even though I only have two kids, I have learned that it takes different methods for each kid. My book is going to be more about building a good relationship with your kid(s) so they will want to do whatever they can to make you proud of them.

Something Self Imposed

So I've been thinking of working on a project for a couple of months now (like I have nothing else to do, right?). But I have really been feeling led to do something. I've started writing a book. I don't know if it will ever actually become a real book, or just something that I may share here or in a newspaper or what. But it's increasingly getting hard for me to ignore the nagging feeling that I need to write my experiences down.

It's a book on parenting.

With the situation our family is in, one would expect my girls to be experiencing a lot of stress, unrest....something. And those things would lead (one would think) to behavior problems. I have been trying to think of why my girls haven't been displaying these issues. Yes, there have been a few times where I have seen small incidents of stress reactions in them. Like when Alexis comes downstairs worried about not seeing her friends for a couple of years. Or when Kaylee didn't feel like going to school the third week Ryan wasn't home. But, even in these minor situations, my girls are easily appeased and in a very short amount of time feel secure again.

Why?

I believe it all boils down to the foundation Ryan and I started with them from Day 1. And that got me thinking, "What did we do?" "How did we build that foundation?" When I think back to Kaylee's temperament in the early years (I know she's only five!), she had the real potential to be a beast. But she's not any where near beastly.

It's hard to ignore the fact that even people from other countries feel the need to tell me how well my girls behave. When we were waiting to exit our flight from Barcelona to Atlanta over Spring Break, a couple of elderly ladies told the girls they were very good on that long flight. Granted they were speaking in Spanish, but I caught enough of what they were saying and could tell by the big smiles on their faces that they were pleased to be seated next to our girls during the flight. (The girls just kind of stared agape...not having any idea what these nice ladies were saying to them!)

So, I'm already working on an outline. Who knows if I'll follow through. I'll probably end up just saving whatever I write for Alexis and Kaylee and give it to them when they have kids of their own.

Feel free to share your thoughts on my project :)

Fun, New Things

The girls experienced some new things this weekend. Saturday at Mom and Dad's house we went mushroom hunting and Grampa took the girls for a canoe ride! Here are some pictures and a video:

Sorry about the quality...I used my cell phone.

Blessed

I just love our kids:) They really are the best:) Ryan told Alexis today, "You guys are so good, you make Mommy and Daddy wish we could have two more just like you!".....almost.....

Picture slide show

This slide show below is all the pictures I took this past week. There are 67 of them! I am too tired at the moment to go through and delete or add captions, but enjoy!

Barcelona-Day Five

So you all do realize that the next post is going to be tons and tons of pictures right? It's very difficult not to take pictures of the beautiful landscape. It's also very difficult not to take pictures of little girls having a great time. I do wish at dinner I had been on the ball and taken some pictures. You'll see why once I get to that point in our day.

First, we had a lazy morning. We were really waiting around the house so we would be here when our lounge chairs arrived. They finally did, but in the mean time we were checking in to our flight and we were arranging having our boarding passes printed at Ryan's office so we could go pick them up. Ryan's Admin Maria is a wonderful woman. She is very helpful indeed!

So after our furniture was delivered we ventured to Ryan's office to pick up our boarding passes and to have some lunch at a japanese restaurant. We met several people in Ryan's office and they seem like very nice people. Maria enjoyed talking to the girls and she offered to help me several times. I think she would like to help me find good places to shop, places to get my hair done, and just everyday type things.

After the quick visit to the office, we went to a japanese restaurant. Ryan and I had bowls of eel and rice, Kaylee has salmon sushi rolls and Alexis had some potstickers. It was very good.

This evening, for Maundy Thursday, we had some bread and grape juice before dinner. We sat around the table and passed a loaf of flat bread and discussed how Jesus had done the same thing with the disciples. We opened with the Lord's Prayer and finished up with our own silent prayers. When were finished Alexis said, "I think if we did this before every meal, it would make me feel really good the rest of the day." Amen!