Camp?? Already?!?!?!

I cannot for the life of me believe that it is camp season. This year has FLOWN by. We start our first official week of camp TODAY. I think we are pretty much ready, but we have an entirely new staff, so it will be a fun learning experience for all of them. I'm very grateful that John's mom is here for a few weeks to help out with the boys. I am sure I couldn't do it on my own this year and stay sane (and/or healthy). I start the third trimester very soon - and Wednesday marks our "double digits" countdown to our due date.

All in all, I am thinking it's going to be a great summer.... I'm kind of glad to have these two months filled up so that I'm distracted from the woes of later pregnancy.

Blessed

It's been a rough, rough, ROUGH couple of days for me. Soon-to-be-third-trimester horomones are kicking into full swing making me tired, cranky and very emotional. I feel like I'm ready to burst into tears at any given moment. Which is all compounded by having a terror of a three year old and a needy two year old. I've been trying to get Brayden to take a nap with me every day this week which, thus far, has ended up in him being mad at me and me giving up in tears and hysteria. If he won't sleep, I can't sleep because he is seriously unpredictable. He would totally do one or all of the following: escape the house (even if all the doors are blocked and or locked), flood the bathroom, try on ALL the pullups and proceed to pee in them all, get into the pantry and try to make himself a snack consisting of peanut butter and cheetos, start a load of laundry after mixing a special concoction of detergent and fabric softner, rearrange the living room furniture, take all the batteries out of anything and everything and hide them, wake Tyler up prematurely, try to take a bath or shower... These are only the things he HAS done - I have no idea what all he could actually come up with if left to his own means.

All that said... I have been blessed for the past few days now by a "secret pal" on my digital scrapbooking website. Today I got a hallmark card in the mail from her just giving me hugs. After the day I'd had thus far, it was like the clouds parted and I could feel sunshine. It's so nice to have someone out there who's making it their job to spoil me - if only for a couple of weeks. She also sent me a scrapbooking gift the other day - a few kits that I'd had on my wishlist! I was able to use them right away to scrap my kiddos. I really enjoyed having some new "toys" to play with. Here's what I came up with...

Deeper.

So yesterday and today have both been teaching/learning experiences for my poor little three year old. Yesterday evening John wanted all of us to come down to the (empty) pool to help sweep out the debris and bag up the leaves that were in the bottom so that he could start power washing soon. Sounds like a ton of fun for little boys, right?? Well, it probably WOULD'VE been if someone knew how to obey. Brayden thought the empty pool was like a great big playground - free to run!! Of course it's sloping ground and CONCRETE!!!! We asked him, told him, yelled at him NOT TO RUN. But boys are boys and run he did. Fall he did. Cry he did. *sigh* So we had to get out of the pool and come home. He proceeded to get bandaids on his knees (I all better now Mommy) and have a stern lecture on WHY Mommy and Daddy should be listened to. Obviously it all sunk in really deeply because today we had all the same issues again. Brayden wants to go to the park? Okay - let's do that! It sounds like fun. But before we could get there, guess who disobeys more than Jonah!!!!! Yeah, that'd be my lovely son. So we skip the park and just do errands instead. On the way home, Brayden asked why he didn't get to go to the park. The ensuing conversation included big words like "privilege" and "consequences." We tried very hard to preschool-down the conversation so that he could understand. I told John after it was all over that it wouldn't be so frustrating if I didn't have to reiterate this one million times a day (or perhaps an hour). But tonight as I sat refelcting on my frustration toward this energetic little creature that has problems listening, I realize that I am no better at all. And I should know better because I've heard the lesson for 30 years as opposed to his three. I can't even begin to imagine how frustrated God must be with me everyday... and then the next thought is obviously... how many privileges have I missed out on??? So conclusion: Not to just work on Brayden's obedience, but instead to work on obedience WITH Brayden.

Gracious.

So it's 9:55 pm. And we're trying to get the boys to go to sleep. It's not working so well. They are just in there giggling at each other... Brayden keeps crawling into Tyler's crib where they just sit and laugh. Then I put Brayden back in bed and Tyler starts whining because he wants to be in bed with Brayden. *sigh* They are quite the handful.

I had an experience in being positive tonight. I was scrapbooking a page for each boy with descriptive words for them. I asked John if he had some words for Brayden and his quote from Toy Story was, "I can't say - there are preschool toys around." But I was finally able to take even their negative traits and spin them in a positive light. Here's what I ended up with:

Scrapbooking & Pregnancy Woes

Thought I'd come post a few of the scrapbook pages I've done lately... This one was for a "love story" challenge. I don't do pages of myself very often, and more rarely of John. Most of this has to do with the fact that I don't have too many pictures of us... But I found out that one of my scrapgirls tools worked in photoshop to help fix one of our wedding pics, so I did a layout with it.



Here is one of my boys. :) I can't wait for Logan to get here and meet his big brothers.



And even better than THAT - my SILLY boys. It's always an adventure around here.



I have a few of Silver Dollar City done, but I think I'll wait and post them all at the same time... I'm trying to get pictures from my mom before I finish up.

Anyway... Guess that's all for now. I want to write more, but it's a cleaning day, and Logan is kind of dragging me down, so I'm having to rest a lot which means it's taking me about 3x as long to get things done. I wish my body handled pregnancy better. I have no idea why my first trimester is always super easy and then I get to the second half of the pregnancy and WHAM! It's like I get hit with a ton of bricks. Thankfully it's usually gone after lunch (which means it's probably diet related), so maybe after I get Tyler down for a nap and get Brayden in "rest time" I'll be able to get a lot of things ticked off my list. Wish me luck.

Welcome to Late Night Television

"And if you're new to Oklahoma, welcome to late night television." That was what Gary England said last night around 11:00 pm while we were watching all the big, scary storms work their way (slowly) across Oklahoma. At one point, there was a storm over Fletcher, Pink AND Fayeteville, AR (Gma & Gpa). Craziness that it was a family affair last night. I kept asking John when/if I should pack a small bag so we could head out to the cellar. He kept telling me to shush so he could hear the radio. But we made it through okay - nothing dramatic to report. There WAS torrential rain and a little hail... I don't want to see how wet the ground is NOW - it hasn't dried out over the last MONTH. It's insane. I feel like I'm living in Seattle. Although yesterday, the sun did come out and the boys got to play outside for a few minutes... Until I started getting attacked by mosquitoes. That's where I draw the line. So anyway... we're all safe, sound, and none the worse for the wear. I hope the sun comes out today and dries up some of the muck.

Something....Anything...

I sit here day after day doing work stuff, play stuff, nothing at all... and I sometimes think to myself, I need to blog. But I haven't gotten around to it. I'm just too lazy sometimes. I was doing a "Top 5 Things I Hate Doing" on Facebook and realized that I pretty much hate doing anything that takes any effort. I'd be a good multi-trillionaire. I would spend everything I have on other people, though. haha I really enjoy spoiling those around me. John can attest to this - he has pretty much everything he thinks he "needs." Even if we can't really afford it, I come up with ways to scrimp somewhere else to get things for him. But then there's myself... I really WANT some cute maternity clothes. I mean, I am seriously dying to buy some. I've even filled up my Old Navy cart online yesterday just to look at it and sigh. I realize, though, that I was brought up to be selfless like this - I can't remember my mom EVER spending extra on herself unless it was her birthday. So I'll just keep wearing my teeshirts and my hand-me-down maternity shirts and be happy because everyone else around me has everything they want - and that makes me happy too.