Nine Years

Tomorrow, July 1st, Scott and I celebrate our 9th Anniversary of marriage. It is hard to believe we've been married nine years, and have known each other for 13! It is a long time in today's society, when so many people call it quits after a short time of being married. We have known many friends that got married around the same time as us, who are now divorced, separated, remarried, or thinking about one of the former currently. It is very disheartening to us to see so many couples who we know and love not together anymore, or thinking of not being together anymore. We know that every situation in a couple's marriage is not like our own, and we can't completely understand what people are going through. But one thing we do know, is that we are blessed to be in the marriage we are in. It is true that things have not always come easy for us in our marriage. We have had our fair share of hard times. But I can honestly say that we never thought about quitting, or giving up. God put us together for a reason, and we honor the commitments that we made to one another. It is not a small thing that we have lasted nine years, and hope to last at least 7 times that many years! Marriage in today's society is often taken so lightly. If the people in the marriage change, or discover new things about themselves that they didn't know when they got married, then why not trade that person in for someone new? Wouldn't things be so much better on the other side with someone that doesn't carry their baggage or mine too? I'm not speaking from experience, but only from what I've heard from so many other people. Well, guess what, every person has some sort of baggage, every person grows and changes. God would not want us to stay the same. He wants us to grow and change, and hopefully to grow closer to Him. I think the problem often comes when someone grows and changes away from God. If both people in the marriage are growing closer to God, then they are growing closer to each other too. I can honestly say that Scott and I have a great marriage and enjoy being married to each other. It doesn't mean it is always easy, or that it's not a choice that we make every day. But we do make that choice . . . we are on the same team. I often say that when we are in the midst of an argument or disagreement. We are not fighting against each other, we are on the same team! We may have different ways of seeing things or thinking we should accomplish the same goal. But normally we have the same goal in mind. We have to often put aside our selfishness to hear the other person's idea or way of doing things. But we always keep in mind that we're on the same team. Once we realized this in our marriage, that one of us was not going to take the option of "getting out" or threatening to leave each other, boy have things been smoother! Not that either one of us really ever thought of leaving as an option, but in today's society, it is a regular choice for many. Don't get me wrong, our marriage is not perfect and we have our things to work on daily, but we work on them. My heart is just broken so often for marriages failing, and people giving up. Nothing is too big for God to work out! This week I celebrate my marriage with my hubby. I am so thankful that he has not given up on me, and I have not given up on him. I love him for so many things. More today than the day I married him. I've seen him develop into a wonderful father, so devoted and caring to his two boys. It gives me encouragement to see the three of them together and spend time together. There is a bright future for my boys, with the example they have to follow of their Daddy. And I've also seen him develop into an even greater husband over the years. I've seen him put aside his time, strength, and energy to provide for us, not only in financial ways, with working two jobs when needed, to allow me to only work part time and be the involved mother that I've always desired to be. But I've also seen him provide for me in emotional ways too. He knows when I need to have time to myself, and takes the boys for me. He knows when I need time out with him, and takes me on a nice date. He pays attention and studies me. More, I admit, than I sometimes study him. How wonderful to have someone love me so much and care about me so much to take the time to show me that I'm worth it! I love you, Scott, more today than the day before! I hope we will always be on the "same team" with each other and always grow closer to God, thus growing closer to each other, and making our marriage and life together even better than it is today! Thanks for the past nine years of marriage. I look forward to so many more!

Shoes, Purses, and Silly Boys

I have been in a shopping mood for the past couple days to try to find the perfect sandals to replace my old ones that I've been wearing for several years. I am the type of person who gets a good pair of shoes and wears them forever, until they wear out and hurt my feet! So, when it's time to replace them, it is a very long process and takes many shopping trips, and returns after walking around with them at home and deciding whether or not they work for what I want. So, I've been looking for a good pair of brown casual/semi-dressy sandals that I can wear with shorts, capris, jeans, dresses that are also COMFORTABLE! I think I finally found them . . . these are Clark's that I found at TJ Maxx. I finally wore them out of the house today to work, so I think that means I am officially keeping them.

I also have been looking for a good purse. This also is a huge decision for me. I used to get a lot of cheaper purses and change a lot back and forth between all of them. But lately I seem to like having a good purse that may cost a little more, but that I use for a long time. I finally found one at Marshall's (I love these discount department stores!) . . . Apparently it is a designer brand, Kathy Van Zeeland, but the thing I like the most about it is the look and functionality. It has great outside pockets on either end for phone and keys, plus a zipper outside pocket. And it has pockets on the inside too for optimal organization! I love pockets in purses. Plus this one is not huge, huge but I can fit a lot into it . . . always great!

And of course a pic of my cuties tonight . . . they love jumping around on our bed and wrestling! This whole boys/brothers thing is new to me! My sisters and I never were this wild!

Happy Father's Day!

The boys enjoyed a short ride in Mama and Papa's convertible on Sunday afternoon . . . it was a special Father's Day treat that Scott got to share with his sons!

We finished the 5K!

We ran a 5K race together this past Saturday night. It was a candlelight run, so it didn't start until 9pm, which was great considering the temps were in the high 90s during the day. It may have cooled to around 87 for the race, which was better, but it was still hot, hot! I finished in 38:20 (around my normal run/walk time) and Scott finished in 42:40 (which was great for his first 5K race since high school, I think?) Maybe we'll try another one in the fall when it cools off again!

Reorganization

We've been doing a little reorganization in our toy room and bonus room lately, with the help of Target! Here are some of the new navy blue, cubby hole shelves we got with the colored baskets to put toys in. They help keep more toys up off the floor.

Also, Ethan sitting on the new blue berber rug that Mama Bailey bought for them in the toy room. It really brightens things up in there!

The new black bookshelves in the bonus room for Scott to store his Star Wars book collection.

Still room for the exercise equipment, which is great since it's been so hot to do anything outside lately!

The new black mini t.v. stand

The reason I am just catching up on a lot of posts

The hard rains that caused the flooding . . . again!

The view out our back door, water covering the patio

Our patio under water

The side yard under water

. . . We had flooding again at our house last Thursday night from a bad storm. This time the water came into the toy room (completely covered the floor), the edge of the boys' bedroom, the back of the kitchen and the corner of the living room. Thankfully, my mom was home watching the boys right when the water surged in and was able to stop a lot of it with towels from completely covering every room. All of our drains we installed and ditches from last year in July worked good up until then. They were actually still working good as the water was shooting out of them like a fountain shooting in the air at the end of each, but the amount of water was just too, too much at one time for them to keep up. So, unfortunately Scott is working AGAIN on digging a deeper ditch between our house and the neighbor's house (where most of the water flows into our yard from poor grading on our builder's part years ago), and he'll have to widen and branch out the drains that we already have to handle more water flow. This will be a gradual week to week process . . . hopefully he can get a lot done before we go out of town over the 4th of July weekend, so we won't have to worry while we're gone. It's a terrible feeling to feel sick to your stomach every time it rains that your house is going to have water rising up into the floors! I wish we could move and ignore this problem, but that is not a reasonable option right now. So for now, we will deal.

Eye Doctor Appointments - Good News

Ethan and Caleb had their eye doctor appointments this morning. The good news is that both of their eyes are improving! Caleb is seeing 20/20 with his glasses, and no longer has to wear his patch (thank goodness!). Ethan is seeing 20/25 with his glasses, and this is another huge improvement! When we first discovered last October that Ethan and Caleb were both very far sighted in their right eyes, Ethan was only seeing 20/80 in his right eye. Then after wearing just the glasses, he improved to 20/70. Then the patching began for 6 hours a day . . . and he improved to 20/40 . . . then more patching and he is now at 20/25! We are very pleased with these results! Since Ethan continues to make improvement with strengthening his sight in his right eye with wearing the patch, he is supposed to continue wearing it 6 hours a day, to hopefully get his vision all the way to 20/20. Then at that point, hopefully we can cut back on the amount of time he has to wear the patch. I am hopeful that at his next appointment at the beginning of September they will say he can reduce his patch wearing time. It is hard on him to have to wear his patch so much, when his brother doesn't have to, but he usually does a pretty good job at it most days.

Here are the guys with their glasses and new short summer haircuts chilling out in the bean bag chairs playing V-smile games tonight!

Reward Charts

Here are the new Reward Charts I made for Ethan and Caleb. Every once and a while I try out new things for motivation. We are trying to stay consistent with this one, as it seems to be helping behavior in the boys lately, and they are working for their stars. Anytime they do one of their chores from the "To Do" section, they move the card to the "Done" clip. Then at the end of the day we can see how many chores they've done, and move their magnetic clip marker that number of stars around the star path. They can also get more stars for anything we determine, like being good at their eye doctor appointment today earned them both 5 stars. They can also get stars taken away and have to go backwards on their star path for bad behavior. When they reach the big star at the end of the path, they get to choose a reward from the "Reward Choices" clip and put it in the "Rewards Earned" clip to turn in for use when we determine. Rewards are things such as, "Play a Wii Game of your Choice, Play a Board Game, Play Outside with your Favorite Toys, Movie Theater Night with Popcorn, etc," - anything I can think of that they enjoy. Things that don't cost money! And of course they are things that we often do anyway, but we make a big deal of them getting to use their "Reward Card" when we do the things they've earned. It seems to be working so far! Ethan is really into it . . . Caleb is still trying to get into the whole concept.

Then at night, we switch out the chore cards for our "Bedtime Routine." They can earn stars for completing the bedtime routine steps in a timely manner too. And at the end, they get to pick two options out of "Read Story, Rub Back, Rocking, or Have the Light on for 5 minutes." This seems to cut down on all the stalling of asking for each of these things after we've already said good night and turned the light off (which we've been having a lot of trouble with lately). Then once we're on the last step of "Lights Out", if they get out of bed, keep yelling for us to come back to their room, etc. then they lose stars too. So, we'll keep trying it and see if it keeps helping behavior and smooth out our bedtime routine!

Dollywood Pictures

Here are some of the pictures from our trip to Dollywood that I said I would post, and am just getting around to doing:

Little Fish

Here are a couple more videos of our little fish at their swim lessons. The first one is of Caleb on his 6th day of lessons jumping in and swimming with a really good kick! The second one is of Ethan on his 7th day of lessons jumping in, stopping to tread water for 20 seconds, and then swimming the rest of the way across the pool!

Swim Lessons - Videos of Ethan

Here are some videos of Ethan from swimming lessons on days 5 and 6. He is learning the back stroke in one video, learning how to tread water in another, and jumping in and swimming all the way across the pool with the front crawl stroke in the last video. I'm so proud of my little swimmer Ethan!

Swim Lessons - Videos of Caleb

These are videos of Caleb on the 2nd Day, 3rd Day, and 5th Day of swim lessons so far. He is practicing swimming on his stomach. I may have posted them backwards, but I think you can tell which one was when he first started . . . head out of the water. And by the last one, he has his head in the water and is actually moving his legs and arms a little on his own! There are a lot more I would love to share, but it's looking like I'll have to devote a lot more time than I have tonight to getting these to upload. I can't believe it takes this long on a cable internet connection and with how short these clips are. Does anyone out there have any better/faster ideas for uploading videos? Let me know! I have some to share of Ethan too . . . but those will be on another day. Enjoy seeing little swimmer Caleb!

Start of Summer

Well, preschool for the boys has officially ended, swim lessons have officially started last week, we went on a weekend trip to Dollywood in Tennessee . . . so I guess that means summer has officially started! I've been slow to update my blog lately because of our busy start to summer, but I thought I better get started before I get too far behind on things!

Last week we started our two weeks of swimming lessons with our friend, Melanie, who taught Ethan last year for the first time. This year Ethan is continuing to learn more, adding in some strokes this year, and Caleb is starting for the first time. I was really worried about Caleb being too young to start and getting too scared in the water, but he has really surprised me and done a great job so far! There is still crying, but it doesn't last very long. Ethan did great last year, so I figured he would do great this year building on what he learned. I have taken a ton of small video clips on my camera from lessons that I am going to try to share. They are very short, but it will probably still take a little while to upload. But I love to look back and see how far they've come. I will post the videos I've picked out to share on the next post.

We just returned early this morning (12:15 am) from our trip to Dollywood in Tennessee. We went with our good friends, the Wileys (Melanie the swim teacher and her family). They had season passes and were able to get a free ticket for Ethan (Caleb was free), and adult tickets discounted, so that was really nice! We drove there after work on Friday, stayed overnight, and went to the park all day Saturday, and drove home Saturday night. It was our first time visiting Dollywood and we really enjoyed it! If you are ever in Tennessee, I highly recommend it. If we didn't live 3 hours away, we probably would've considered season passes. But Caleb wasn't too into the rides yet, so we may wait until he's older to go again. Ethan on the other hand had a great time riding rides and water rides. I will also post pictures from our trip on a later post when I upload everything.

One more birthday picture

Here is a picture of my family on the day we celebrated my birthday with our parents and friends. It makes me smile! Ethan likes to lean his head to the side when he takes pictures and Caleb likes to blow like he is blowing out candles. Hmmmm??