Still in Love

Friday was our 5th wedding anniversary. Five years we've been married, and 7.5 years since we've been together. Seems like just yesterday that Loren and I met, but it's been 8 years since we first started chatting with each other online. I love my husband. He is my soul mate, my partner, my best friend. I can tell him anything. Including stuff he really would rather I didn't share but I do anyway. He supports my dreams. Even if I am a bit wishy-washy and easily sidetracked. He makes me laugh. Even when I don't feel like it or want to. He is a great dad and I love watching him play with our boys. We make beautiful babies and I would make tons of them with him if he would let me. We are a team. We're always there for each other and we both want what's best for each other and for our family as a whole. Things have been tough at times but we've been able to get through them together. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with this man!


I think the lyrics to the first song we danced to on our wedding day still sums it all up the best:

When You Say Nothing At All

It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word you can light up the dark
Try as I may I could never explain
What I hear when you don't say a thing

The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me if ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all

All day long I can hear people talking out loud
But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd
Old Mr. Webster could never define
What's being said between your heart and mine

The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me if ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all

The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes sayin' you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me if ever I fall
You say it best when you say nothing at all

-Written by Don Schlitz & Paul Overstreet

Justin is (Terrible) Two

Justin turned two on Thursday, October 22, 2009. My silly little Monkey-man has always been a sweetie and pretty laid back, but he is definitely two. He's got a little bit of an attitude now and has a definite opinion and temper about things. He's also a bit of a klutz and a daredevil (two things that should probably never mix) and has a number of bruises and bumps to show for it, most on his head. I have a feeling he'll be the first kid to send us to the ER.


Justin is sort of counting to 10- he counts them 1, 2, 6, 7, 8. And he is copying his brother saying his ABCs- A, B, C, D, E, F, G, a, a, a, a, T, U, V. It's so cute!
Happy Birthday (a little late) Monkey-Man!

Childhood is the most beautiful of all life's seasons. ~Author Unknown

Again, I post my baby boy's birthday wishes late!

Loren turned 5 on Thursday, September 24th! Five! Just in the past couple months I've seen him grow into a young boy. He's not a baby anymore. He's much more mature (although we still have occasional tantrums when he's tired), he's very polite, and very loving. He has started preschool (NM cut-off for K is Sept 1) and is making new friends. And he's very smart. I would probably put him at a Kindergarten level academically and he knows lots and lots of random facts (gee, I wonder where he gets that from?).

We had a Transformers party for him on Sunday, September 27. We invited a few of his friends from MOPS, my family, and Mike's family. A few people couldn't make it because the flu is going around our town, but it was still a nice party. I've been waiting to post this so I could post pictures but I have been having issues with my computer freezing up. Here are some pics!

We've had bad luck with our kids - they've all grown up. ~Christopher Morley

He didn't look back

Little Loren started preschool today. As I mentioned in a previous post, he qualifies for Occupational Therapy through the school district. We had his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) last Friday and they will be taking him out of his classroom for 1/2 hour a week (2 days, 15 minutes each) and the rest of his time will be in his classroom. He will go Monday through Thursday in the afternoons which works out great because our playgroup meets on Thursday mornings and he can still go to that, and then our playgroup does our extra activities on Fridays so he can still go to that too.

We talked up school all weekend, asked him if he was excited, and just really encouraged him that it would be fun. Last night I asked him what he wanted to wear and he asked me if he had "a Transformers shirt." I told him he doesn't, so he decided he wanted to wear his Dino Robot shirt. He also wanted PB&J for lunch so I called the school this morning to make sure it was ok to send peanut butter. It wasn't an issue so he had PB&J, a cereal bar, carrots fresh from the garden, some chips, and a water bottle with Ocean Spray drink mix in his lunch box.


We got him dressed, loaded up his backpack and lunch box, and then it was time to go. Loren stopped to pose for pictures on our front porch, although he wasn't very cooperative so I don't have any "happy" pictures of him. Then we all got in the car and drove to the school. We have to wait in line for his teacher to get him out of his car so I took another picture. Then it was time to let him go. His teacher came and got him and they went and sat down on the sidewalk outside. He didn't even look back or wave or anything. I got a tiny bit teary-eyed but didn't really cry. And I'm not too entirely convinced that Daddy wasn't misty-eyed either- sunglasses are good for hiding those things.


Justin asked about him a few times while we were running our errands and stopping at home for lunch, but he didn't seem too upset. We'll see how he does when this is a nearly every day thing.

Finally 3:15 came around and it was time to pick Loren up. Daddy couldn't go to pick him up, so it was just Justin and I. We pulled into the pick up lane and when it was almost our turn, I almost started bawling because I missed my little buddy and was excited to see him. I pulled up to the pick up spot and got the biggest and cutest wave from Loren when he figured out it was my car waiting there. His teacher said he did great and they had a really good day.

Loren said they sang some songs about green and black and pink, he drew some sort of ship, and they played with pretend dinosaurs outside. I'm not entirely sure what it all means but he had fun and wasn't upset or scared or anything so I'm pretty proud of him.

Now I'm getting teary-eyed again. He'll be 5 next week and I'm just not ready for that!

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children.
One is roots. The other is wings.
~Hodding Carter, Jr.

"Music?"

Justin loves music. A few months ago we were at my parents' house and he was playing my mom's piano. He doesn't pound on it like most kids do, it sounded more like he was playing actual songs. I had been playing a few songs using the music and when he saw it, I told him that it was music. Ever since then, he recognizes music notes everywhere we go and always says "music." The day after I told him that, we were at the church for my cousin's wedding and he found a prayer book. The first half of the book is all of the readings for the year and the second half is all songs. When Justin first opened up the book, he told me "story." Then he kept turning pages and found the music and told me "music." It's kind of cute the way he says "music." He pronounces it right, but he always says it with a question mark at the end- "music?"

A few days later, we were home again and I had gotten a dictionary down for some reason. Justin was looking at the dictionary and came up to me and said "music" and sure enough he had found a page that had music notes on it. He finds music notes all over everywhere and always asks me to play music on my computer. He bounces all over when he sees me going into my music folder on my computer. He recognizes a bunch of different instruments as "music" even if he doesn't know them by name yet.

This last weekend we went to my parents' house again for my dad's birthday party. My sister and I were sitting on the kitchen floor and we were talking to Justin and playing with him. All of a sudden he stops and says "peeneano" (piano) and runs to my mom's piano. I opened it up and he climbed up on the bench and started playing. Nobody said ANYTHING about the piano but he suddenly remembered that Gramma has a "peeneano" and had to go play it. Pretty much all weekend he played the piano, even after he smashed his fingers when he tried to close the keyboard lid at bedtime. He even saw my high school senior portrait with my violin and told my dad "Mommy, music."

I'm excited to see this interest in him- music runs on both sides of the family and I think music is such an important part of life. It will be fun to see where this passion grows.

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you,
following you right on up until you die. ~Paul Simon

Big changes around here...

The biggest one is that little Loren is going to preschool after all. I took him in last week to be evaluated for speech because I wasn't sure where he was in relation to his peers. They screen for speech, OT, and another one (I forget what), and they said that he was fine for speech, but that he qualified for OT.

I thought it was just because I'm his mom and he's 4.5 that he doesn't pay attention and doesn't follow directions, and I thought he's just being shy when we're in strange places. He's really not all that shy, but he does get very easily overwhelmed if too many new people pay attention to him all at once. Once he knows you though, you have a friend for life. My husband's whole family is "type-A" personalities and LL is already struggling with perfectionism- I discovered this when I was trying to teach him how to write his name and he got frustrated when he couldn't write the letters perfectly every time.

I'm nervous about sending him off, but it's only afternoons for less than 3 hours and I know they'll be helping him learn what he needs to do to cope. I'm still hoping to homeschool him starting next year, and I am planning on continuing to work with him on K stuff this year. But for now, we're waiting to have an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting with his teacher(s?) and occupational therapist(s) to see what goals we have for him. The school district started this week so they're trying to get settled with what they have and then get the new students in. So it will be about another week or two before he actually starts. I asked him today if he wanted to ride the bus (he has the option) or if he wanted me to drive him, and he said he wants me to drive him. I'm perfectly okay with that!

The other big change is that Loren (hubby) is leaving his job at Job Corps. The management there leaves MUCH to be desired and they're just getting worse instead of better. I told Loren a couple weeks ago that I was tempted to tell him to just quit and focus on building up his judo club. At the time he told me "no, I have to stay at Job Corps." A couple days later he called me and told me he was going to turn in his 2-weeks notice. Friday is his last day. Right now, he's working on several leads for part-time work in the mornings and is going to work on building up the Roswell Judo Club in the afternoons. I'm not really as freaked out about the sudden change in income as I thought I would be. We've been through worse and we know what we can live without and what we can cut back on. He's also working on a couple other things, but right now I'm not at liberty to disclose that information.

Fall is a busy season for us no matter what, and these next few months will definitely be crazy with our new changes, but I know we'll come out the other end doing just fine. God always takes care of us.

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown

We saw a toad today!

We've gotten a lot of rain since the beginning of July, so the creatures are taking advantage of the extra moisture and coming out to play. Loren has been working on fixing everyone's vehicles (finishing Michelle's truck, replacing my brakes AGAIN) all weekend at his mom's house and when we were playing "musical cars," he decided to sweep up a little bit of the dust and debris that had accumulated under Michelle's truck. When he did that, a toad (we thought it was a frog at first) hopped out from the grass by the fence. He chased it with a broom to the other side of the carport area where he was working so I wouldn't run over it. When I parked my car, I went around the side to see if I could see the toad.

He* was just sitting out in the open all fat and happy, so I went to go get the boys from inside the house. When we got out there, I couldn't find the toad. I was pretty bummed that the boys didn't get to see him and little Loren went back inside. Justin and I were just hanging around watching Daddy and I decided to look a little harder for the toad since I figured he was hiding in the vines on the other side of the fence. Sure enough, I found him hiding under the vines and showed Justin, who thought he was pretty cool. Then we went and got little Loren back from inside the house. I used a stick to gently nudge the toad to see if I could get him out into the open but he just jumped further back into the vines. I found him again and it was actually a better view of him where we could see his whole body. The boys thought he was pretty neat. I would have tried to catch him but he was already scared, and I didn't have anything to put him in. Then I decided it was time to leave him alone, so we all went back inside. The ONE day where I didn't have my camera with me, we find something cool. Oh well, such is life.

I figured since there probably aren't very many amphibians in New Mexico, I could probably find him on a list of NM frogs/toads somewhere on the internet. Sure enough, there was an almost identical picture of the toad on Wikipedia. I'm fairly certain our little friend is called Bufo speciosus or Texas Toad**. Loren (hubby) said he must be a little lost to be in New Mexico instead of Texas, but I found that the species does not limit it's range to within the Texas border *wink*. Little Loren decided to name our little friend Megatron (after the Transformer, of course) even though we didn't keep him.

*I have no idea if the toad was a boy or girl. I just figured using masculine forms would be easier.

**It is quite possible that "Megatron" could also have been a Bufo woodhousii (Woodhouse's Toad) because they appear to have very similar markings. The toad we saw was fairly large (about the size of my fist) and the Woodhouse's Toad is at least an inch larger than the Texas Toad. I guess that will teach me to have my camera with me so that we can take pictures in order to correctly identify our finds. I have a feeling this is going to be an interesting adventure of identifying creatures from here on out.

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals"
(so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man.
I find the result humiliating to me.
~Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, 1907