Monday, February 28, 2011

The Marriage Course

We have been taking The Marriage Course, but let me back track just a bit. For my New Years Resolutions, I wanted to get on track with a few things in our life. The main one being money. We are in a nice spot with our home mortgage being the only debt we have. But how do we build on that? Savings accounts are great but they aren't really enough. Plus there is all this other stuff that gets thrown at us-we needed to be educated-we need to know the most about what to do with money. So, we signed up for FPU at Reflections. I called one of my friends who goes to that church to see if she and her husband wanted to join us. Weird, I know, especially since it involves money. I mean, who wants their friends to know anything about how much or in our case not so much money we have, right? Well, I actually learned a fun little trivia tidbit Friday night-America is one of the few countries on the entire planet whose people have a problem talking about their money. Crazy, right? Especially for one of the richest nations. I was one of those people at one time. It has been very freeing to say to my friends, this is how much we have, this is what it gets spent on, and this is how we are saving. This has even enabled me to rope in one of my friends to teach me how to grocery shop! I never would have known what a master budgeter she was unless I confessed to her the hard time I have being intentional with money. But I digress........FPU will be another blog entry altogether. Long story short; they couldn't do FPU with us as much as I peer pressured her into it (sometimes scheduling conflicts really are scheduling conflicts), so she turned the tables on me and peer pressured us into doing The Marriage Course with them every Tuesday night for the next 8 weeks. I fall pretty easy to most peer pressure when its for a good cause so we were in. We then peer pressured 2 more of our friends into doing it too. It has been so enjoyable!

Tomorrow night is the last night in
The Marriage Course. For the past 8 weeks we have met at Reflections for this great course. The pastor at this church is actually the pastor who married Tyler and I and he is awesome! The selling point to the whole class was that each Tuesday night they provided childcare and cooked us dinner at our own little candle lit table. And even though we are there with friends, it is a very private and safe environment. After all, it is on marriage. It has been a built in date night once a week for the past 2 months. Never in my life did I ever think a Tuesday night would be something to look forward to! We LOVE it!
Each week the course covers a different topic; here is my little spin on each week:


Week 1: The Introduction
. Pastor Dave got up and talked to us candidly about marriage and the course itself and what we would be doing for the following 7 weeks. The greatest relationship we have on this earth is the one we have with our spouse. Why not put forth the most energy to it? We were sold hook line and sinker!
Week 2: The Art of Communication. The importance of talking and listening. Feelings, filters and bad habits all came out in this class.
Week 3: Building Strong Foundations. This is where we evaluated areas in our marriage and talked about them with each other. The 4 components were friendship, communication, physical relationship and building our future together. We took a little quiz and then compared our scores with our spouses. It was fun and educational!
Week 4: Resolving Conflict. We learned how to express our appreciation for each other, how to recognize that we have differences, how to negotiate areas of conflict and how to pray together. It was interesting to actually label ourselves as rhinos or hedgehogs. Rhino's attack when provoked and hedgehogs withdraw when they are threatened. I can be both. Wow, Tyler is so very lucky to try to figure me out!
Week 5: The Power of Forgiveness. Don't bury hurt and anger. Identify the hurt, apologize and forgive. Pastor Dave did a wonderful job of explaining forgiveness too.
Week 6: Parents and In-Laws. This is a blog entry all on its own and will have a follow up later. I learned more about me and the family I grew up in this week. It was fun, it was exciting, and it made me very warm and fuzzy inside. I also learned a lot about Tyler and how he is the man that he is today.
Week 7: Good Sex. Pastor Dave actually said that was a typo and it should read Great Sex. I must say, I was a bit anxious about this one. Talking about sex in church is only something I whisper or text to my girlfriends about during MOPs. I have never thought about involving a pastor in it. But, like he said-God invented sex and he is a pastor who is married and has a lot of sex. It was a wild ride of a class, bad choice of words, it was a crazy class. This one also has its own blog entry. Scratch that-this entry will go in my other blog!
Week 8: Love in Action. This one starts tomorrow night. By no means am I an overachiever these days and so I did not read ahead. But, I am assuming this last class will tie everything together and send us home very completed. I wonder if we get little certificates? I also wonder what they are cooking for dinner!

Kids Fair 2011

Hadley! I didn't take very many pictures of her this weekend. I snapped this one at snack on Saturday evening before we went out on a date. She is so cute and just lights up our lives! We had a babysitter for all 3 kids Saturday night so we could go to dinner and the movies and it was WONDERFUL! We randomly ended up at a Chinese restaurant we had never been to which turned out to be super delicious ( I can't remember the name but I do remember its location!) and the movie we saw even lived up to and surpassed the hype! Fabulous Date! I love my kids but I really love Tyler and I so appreciate nights out with him!



When I thought back about what we did over the weekend, for some reason, I completely forgot that we went to Kids Fair! Chris and Cammie joined us and we all headed over to the fairgrounds for the Kids Fair. I actually think this outing might have been Cool Uncle Chris's idea! The big draw to this event was Dora and Diego were going to be there-that was enough for my kids, they were sold on the idea of meeting them! We walked around for a while and saw a few things and then came upon Dora and Diego. We then looked at the massive line that circled the expo building filled with kids and their crazy parents waiting to meet Dora (who by the way was in a crop top, weird) and Diego. No way were we standing in line. Sorry kids. As luck would have it, after touching a few dirty animals in the petting zoo, we were on our way out to grab some lunch and Dora and Diego were being escorted away for a little break. Carter went ballistic! He went running after Dora yelling her name at the top of his little lungs. She didn't even turn around. He was a tad disappointed and very curious as to how it was even possible she didn't hear him yelling. But, he was still thrilled that he got to be close to the real Dora! We had a fun filled hour or so at the kids fair and then enjoyed a delicious lunch at El Gallo Giro with Chris and Cam!







Tanner and Carter giving the 4-H wolf high fives. Maybe its not a wolf? Maybe its a coyote? I'm actually not too sure what that thing is!



Carter with the crazy chicken man. He kept picking this chicken up and holding it right up to people. He was odd, Carter was a bit frightened by this mans antics. We were however, at the fairgrounds, and as it seems, the fairgrounds always bring out the crazies!


Carter with the goat. The goat was getting his hair brushed. I wonder if goats have issues with tangles? Speaking of hair, this picture gives a nice shot of the "test patch" on the back side of Carters head from when Tanner gave him his reverse Mohawk haircut. I'd say its all growing back rather nicely. No tangles. Soon Iwill be able to take them both in for a professional haircut
and we can say adios to the chia pet and the backwards Indian or Native American-depending on how PC you want to be!


Tanner (Chia Pet) and Carter (Backwards Native American) at the Fire Fighter booth practicing dialing 911.




Tanner on the swings getting ready to go for a ride. Carter opted out of this ride. I think that was a wise choice since I'm not too sure about his motion sickness and whether or not he's outgrown that yet. I didn't feel like experimenting with that on the swing ride!


Swinging!



Daddy, Hadley and Uncle Chris. Good times at the Kids Fair. Not too sure if we scared Chris and Cam with this outing or not.......updates to come!



Tanner and Carter by the cool race car!




The martial arts monkey. I made the mistake of filling out one of their forms to win something and so far they have called twice. I didn't win but they would love for me to sign the kids up for karate. No. I have said no twice now. I think the next time they call they might catch me on one of my days when I only speak Espanol! No habla Ingles! Lo Ciento! Why in the world did I give them our phone number? My brain is totally gone. Rad.











Tanner and the swings!

Friday, February 25, 2011

Monday, February 14, 2011

Welcome to the Paaaarty!

I turned 33 on Friday! I wanted to go to dinner with Tyler at Sakura with him and no children! I just love Sakura! It's like Benihana, where they cook in front of you and put on a little show! So, I had asked Chris and Cam to watch the kids that night for us. When they showed up, they were all dressed up which is odd because my sister usually comes in PJs when they watch the kids! Surprise! They asked my mom to watch the kids and they were coming to dinner with us! Fun!




Tyler and me. He's making his very best pirate face, and so for the rest of the evening we laughed and made pirate jokes!

Chris and Cam!



Me, Tyler, Cam and Chris at Sakura.



Me trying to catch a shrimp in my mouth that was being tossed by our chef! I missed one and I caught one!




After dinner, the night was young and we were kid free so we headed over to Pinnacle

for drinks and desert! This is me with my yummy Blue Bikini drink!

I had such a great evening! Thanks guys and thanks mom for watching the kiddos so we could all go out! I love you!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

The Hair Cut


Today started out like any other day, it ended like no day has ended before! We had a busy day ahead of us, there were a few bumps in the road here and there but it all worked out! I thought I should call the doctor while I was on my way to drop off Carters comforter at Norge Laundry to get the vomit cleaned off from his last sickness stint because Hadley's wheezing was making me nervous. They wanted me to bring her in to check her out, so I got my mom to pick Tanner up from Big Preschool-bump averted! Hopefully Carter did not pick up another nasty bug while we were at the doctors office. When we got home, I had planned on making a bunch of marinades and putting them in baggies along with a few different cuts of meat so voila, I have marinated meat in the freezer that I can just pull out any time I want to! I was in the kitchen doing this, Hadley was asleep and the brothers were playing "fort" in our closet. It was almost a slice of heaven for a few hours! All of a sudden I started to smell Tyler's cologne. It was getting stronger and stronger. I went into our bathroom to check it out. What I saw was quite impressive. They had string dental floss all over our closet, each of them had on a pair of Tyler's shoes and it smelled to high heaven of cologne. The icing on the cake was Tanner had cut Carters hair right down the middle with the electric clippers. They were so proud of the floss; telling me it was a trap for Daddy and they were absolutely elated about the success of the hair cut! All I could do was laugh! Gotta love those brothers! They did allow me a few hours to put together my frozen meat concoctions and I so appreciated that!

The Sick Mattress

We have a mattress in our house that we kindly refer to as the "Sick Mattress". It lives up and away most of the year and we bring it out when one of the kids get sick. This mattress enables us to stay in our own room, in our own bed without adding people to our bed! Sometimes I feel like singing "there were 5 in a bed and the little one said....." but I stop myself. I'm sure I did not invent this sick mattress by any means but I do have to say that it is one of my favorite creations! I am pretty proud of it! It lays at the foot of our bed when we have a sick kid, they sleep on and we can keep an eye on them through the night. I usually try to keep a bunch of fresh sheets and towels nearby so that when they do throw up, things are easily cleaned up and we can continue through the night. Carter was the last person to use the sick mattress and he has since changed its name to "Throw Up Bed". Lovely. But, that was the reason he used it for almost a week a half, so why not! The throw up bed has made its way back up and away from the foot of our bed, waiting for its next victim!