Day 127-Compassion for a Cockroach

Every morning when I wake up... I find one, two, maybe three dead (or close to dead) cockroaches lying on the tile in the kitchen. I normally just use a little bit of toilet paper to pick them up with and flush them down the toilet-no big deal. Well this morning Tate found a cockroach before me. It was laying on it's back with its feet kicking in the air. When Tate realized that it was dying, he burst into tears and ran straight to his bedroom where he cried for 5 minutes straight. Then he came back downstairs and cried for another 10 minutes. Finally when he could talk, he told me how sad he was for that poor cockroach. Tate has so much compassion for people and animals. He just has a genuine concern for others-even for ugly cockroaches!

Day 126-Storing Artwork,Schoolwork,Cards, etc.

Growing up, my Mother used to store our artwork, schoolwork, birthday cards, report cards, class pictures etc. in 2 inch notebooks. She would place the work in sheet protectors, so that it would look nice and would last a long time. It was a very easy and quick alternative to scrapbooking.

I'd always been happy that she saved so many of my memories even if it took up 12+notebooks. During the past several years, I've had friends comment on my books. Some of them thought it was cool, others totally made fun of me for keeping it all.

Recently I've gone back and forth on the matter. It is a lot to store... But then again, it is so much fun reminiscing my childhood. Lately I've heard about a lot of people going digital-scanning in all of their children's artwork etc. and not keeping a thing. Although I think that this is great for storage purposes, I personally enjoy flipping through an actual book. I would LOVE to scrapbook it all, but let's be real here-I simply don't have the time to scrapbook everything.

I have to admit... I've had Tate's stuff stored in a box until I could decide which system to use. It has been no fun in a box because we couldn't look at it easily. So after weighing my options, I've decided to stick with the notebook! Its worked out really good so far... I've sorted through his things and saved only our favorites (yes I included him in the decision making of what we were to keep). I'm happy that all of his stuff from birth through Preschool have fit in just one notebook.

Click Here for the blog post that really helped me to make my decision to continue with the notebook method.

Day 125-Full House

We had all 8 cousins from my side of the family over today. As you can see, most of them had fun! It's always slightly crazy when you have 8 kids under the age of seven all together playing, but it's well worth it! Hopefully they'll remember all the good times they have...

Day 124-Sunscreen

Tate learned about the importance of wearing sunscreen at preschool today. When he came home, we had a conversation about skin cancer and how wearing sunscreen can help prevent it. I told him that Grandpa Larry had some skin cancer on his nose and he had to have it removed. Tate looked up at me with a look of disbelief. He said, "for reals?" Knowing that he was thinking that Grandpa Larry's whole nose was removed I clarified, "Not the whole nose, just part of it." Tate still with a look of wonder and awe stated, "how embarrassing!"

Day 123-Tate's Handcrafted Clay Necklace

Tate has had this sudden interest in sculpting things from clay. So when we went to Michael's the other day (for something else), he just HAD to have some clay. We ended up buying it and he was very insistent on making a necklace out of it. He wanted to start immediately (no time to waste). It ended up being a very easy and fun little project for him. We just took the clay and made snakes out of it, cut it up into different sized pieces and then used the back side of a paint brush to make holes in the beads. They dried overnight and then he painted them first thing this morning. He was very proud of himself to say the least!

Day 122-Hanging Blinds & New Kitchen

I'm getting fast at hanging blinds. On Saturday I hung 7 blinds by myself after my Dad showed me how. I think that I got the last one's up in less than 4 minutes!

Here is the newly remodeled kitchen. I like it. Can you believe it used to look like this?

Day 121-New Job

So Bryan got a new job on Thursday! YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Can you tell I'm excited? He's going to continue doing SUNKISS POOLS on the side, but now we will hopefully have a more steady income. He's the Project Manager over a company that builds large shade structures. They have stayed very busy even with the crazy economy. So far Bryan is enjoying it. He's been working a ton-lots of hours.

Edited May 22, 2009

Something Hilarious:

During the first week of Bryan's new employment, he drove home to our old apartment twice (while talking on the phone) completely forgetting that we had moved the week before. Ha/Ha. Now that sounds like something I would do:)