Well life is not always what you plan it.. but that keeps things interesting!  I had planned on focusing on running  and training for a half marathon with my sister and taking a break from "trying" to getting pregnant, but instead I got pregnant the first month of my "break".  I am actually very happy, that is just the way I wanted it, naturally without stress or overly trying.   We are so excited!  I am due mid October. So almost 3 months along now... So far pregnancy has been miserable... Morning sickness not just in the morning but all! the! time! I have been feeling better this last week or so, but today am back to feeling truly awful, and puking all morning. I have finally got my stomach settled and now am exhausted.  I am so thankful for a light day at work!

Life has been moving right along. Ocean had her birthday in March and turned 13! Our yard is already in full bloom and I am attempting to get our garden together. I love watching all the spring time animal activity. Birds and squirrels courting and making nests, baby birds squawking for food.  This is our first spring in this house, so it has been fun to watch daffodils and other flowers unexpectedly pop up.

It is spring break for Ocean, Raine, and Layke and it has been so fun to spend extra time with them. Yesterday we had breakfast in the tree house, jumped on the trampoline with the sprinkler, worked on Layke's fairy house, I finished mowing the lawn, then when there was a crazy rain storm went out in the rain (after the lightning stopped) and got ice cream from the ice cream man who cruises our street. They successfully ate just about ALL the food in the house so we stopped by a non named fast food joint that I swear never to go to for "dinner". What can I say they wear me out! But it was a wonderful day. I feel like I don't always get to spend time really being with them, but running around to soccer and here and there. They decided they wanted to stay at the house all day, so it was fun coming up with fun things to do without going anywhere. Its nice to just stay home sometimes.

Joey has been back to working out of town, it was so nice to have him home during the winter when work was slow. He is looking at going back to school for a career change so he can be around more. Weekends aren't enough!

I have been loving the warm spring weather, and the dramatic almost daily thunder storms. I am looking forward to the summer and enjoying the sunshine as much as possible!

Happy New Year!

This year feel so fresh and new! I look forward to this year.

All in all 2011 was challenging but I am very grateful for all the opportunities my family and I have been given. It has been a more difficult transition than I ever would have known picking up everything and moving across the country.

Although I never saw my family much more than I do now, they feel farther away and I miss being "close". I also went through a major career change, and am still in the first year of running my own business. That has been very challenging, but I am so thankful to live in a country where running my own business is a viable option.



Some goal for this year include:
Really settling into our house, better organizing the house and unpacking the last of the boxes in the garage
Continuing to reminding myself of all the _good_ aspects of running my own childcare business out of our home
Fully embracing living in North Carolina, and making more friends
Running the Riverton half marathon in March with my sister
And focusing on enjoying every moment, every breath, not always looking forward to " I can be happy when this happens... "

I wish you a very happy New Year!

Autumn Time

I'm sure I say it about every season, but I love and adore Autumn.
I love warm sweaters, and scarfs.
I am getting excited for knitting and just need to come up with a project using some of the yarn I already have.
I love the brillant colors of the changing leaves.
I love seeing squirrels running around burying snack for winter time.
I love watching the birds devour the sunflower we grew. I look forward to feeding our cardinals and other non migrating birds this winter...

The summer so far...

This summer has seemed to be flying by! We enjoyed this past weekend on the coast in the Wilmington area celebrating Layke's birthday and Joey and I's second anniversary. It was so nice to get back to the ocean! and it was fun to be in an area where the ocean is more swim-able than in Oregon. We spent almost all weekend in the water. Body boarding, skim boarding, swimming, searching for seashells, building castles... The beach is our favorite play ground. I can't wait to get back!

Well it has been awhile since I posted. Since my last post we bought and moved into a house, (yay!) and I got licenced as a home daycare and now have 4 children enrolled (double yay!)

Our house is wonderful. We got it for a really good price, it is small, about 700 square feet, but it is all we need. 3 bedroom, 1 Bath, and on a 3/4 acre lot. We have slowly gotten settled in, planted small vegetable garden and herb garden and a few peach trees. Our house also has a "breeze way" or car port that connects the house and the garage. We spend a lot of time there where it is always shady and always has a breeze going one way or the other.

Why home day care you may ask? Well after we moved here to North Carolina I was having difficulty find employment in the field I was working in previously (I was an activity director at an assisted living facility for seniors) so I looked for jobs working with children, and ultimately decided that if no one would hire me, I would make my own work. I eventually wanted to do home childcare once we eventually get pregnant and have a baby so it worked out to transition into doing that now and get everything set up and running now.

The licensing process was relatively painless, just a few things we had to do around the house to pass inspection, and now I am officially in business. Life is never dull with lil' munchkins running around. I remember once recently my husband asked me how my day was going... and I told him "Well.. got laundry washed and on the clothesline, breakfast made, got Raine to soccer camp, only to realize he hadn't brought any of his stuff and had to come back for it, a child care boy threw up in the car, and .. well its a normal morning..." All he said was "WOW" It is a lot of work, but I feel the opportunity to work with these wonderful children every day is worth it.

I love working with children, they help remind you what is really important in life, and give you plenty of opportunities to remember to stop and smell the dandelions. Children help you notice an be enthusiastic about small things that otherwise would have been missed. I also love their enthusiasm for learning, and reminds me to continue my own learning.

All in all a busy but nice summer.

Hope your summer is going well too!

Oh Happy Day

Today I completed the purchase of my car. I am so so excited. It has been 5 months now with out a car and I have to say it has been tough. It is a 2000 Ford Windstar. Yes a minivan. Can you believe it? It is part of my ultimate goal of having a home daycare so I can stay at home and have babies. So I am very excited. Funny how tastes in cars change. I never thought I would be dying to own a minivan...

But I do have conflicted feelings On the flip side of my excitement is this: My mini van doesn't get the greatest gas mileage and I feel like a big time failure to thrive without a car. In my defence there are not bike lanes or sidewalks. There is a decent bus system, but it is so time consuming. Trying to go grocery shopping for a family of 5 taking the bus? Didn't work out for me so well. I hate being dependent on oil. I just watched I heart Huckabees, and it reminded me of my carefree college days without a car, and not missing one.

I do hereby solemnly swear with you as my witness to use my car for trips worth going on, and too far to walk, IE 20 miles to work, hauling groceries. I will coordinate my trips to be mileage efficient. I will walk several parking lots rather than drive 500 yards.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years! We sure did. Christmas day it started snowing at 8am, and snowed all day. Leaving us with our first real amount of snow. We enjoyed it. Sledding almost everyday with the kids. The kids got a practice snow board for Christmas so they practiced using that. Raine is already a pro, and is already going off jumps and getting air. We had fun taking pictures, and being out in the snow. Me and Ocean had a lot of fun using an extra snowboard with no bindings as a sled. It goes SO fast, part of the fun is being thrown off or throwing yourself into the snow to stop before the briar patch, and the road. Layke built a really cool round snow fort. Ocean, Layke and I made a Snow Woman, complete with a baby. It has been so long since I have experienced "real" winter weather and I love it. I even got new boots for christmas! Yay for snow, and Yay for Christmas!

For New Years Joey and I went downtown and walked around enjoying each others company. We wanted to go dancing but not really feeling the crazy party scene so we watched the fireworks downtown and listened to the clock striking midnight (my favorite part), kissed (always great), and went home. It was fun to enjoy the first moments of the new year together. It is funny reflecting on the past New Years. This is our forth together. I look forward to all our future years and adventures together.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am feeling very blessed this Thanksgiving. True we don't have a great excess, but I have a safe place to live, my immediate family close my, easy access to clean clothes, water, and a abundance of food. We had a fun day with the kids yesterday, they are all healthy and happy. What more can you really need?

I also just read the book "The Poisonwood Bible", by Barbara Kingsolver. It is a story that takes place in Africa. I have always known the conditions that some people live, and that there are wars and corrupt governments, and how children in developing countries go hungry. But this book really put a face on that suffering for me. It is a story of an American family that goes to Africa on a mission trip, in the late 1950's. The book encompasses cultural differences, politics, family dynamics and so much more, it really moved me. It made me feel guilty for living in such a country as I do with so much waste, greed and over consumption, while I go about carefree while there is such suffering to other humankind. Especially while America exploits other countries to ensure they have cheap coffee, bananas, diamonds, rubber, etc.

This book really made me realize how lucky we are to live in the country we do, where we are safe, well fed, and have so many opportunities it is overwhelming. It made me think of a program that we had donated to previously, Compassion International. In the process of digesting the book I felt very moved to DO something, so I decided to start sponsoring a child. For just $38 a month you can provide funding to ensure the child is given adequate food, shelter and schooling. Without an opportunity at an education where would any of us be? We opted not to look through all the pictures of needy children and try to pick which one to chose, instead letting them choose for us a child who has gone the longest with out a sponsor. I know it isn't a huge difference in vast enormity of how many children go hungry every day throughout the world, but to that one child it will make a world of difference, and I am content with that.

I have made a decision to be more aware of need around me and am looking for other ways to help in my community locally as well. I think Thanksgiving is a great time to really look at what you have and give thanks for it, and give to those in greater need if possible. It is not easy, it requires you to get out of your comfort zone a little bit.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Love to all, I hope you have a wonderful holiday!