i blame facebook

i remember saying i was not getting a facebook account and then i got one and now i cannot remember why i said i would not get one. but i do sight facebook as one of the reasons that i don't blog as much as i originally intended. facebook is easy to "use" and it re-connects you with people that you missed talking to for years. of course, people say, if you loved these people so much that you are now obsessed with seeing every status update then why did you lose touch with them in the first place. i do not have the answer to that. and then there is the argument that fb is impersonal and promotes more "sitting in front of the the computer" communication...i say "so"?

christmas this year was very fun. and on new year's eve we all met up at mom's house and had a great time. lots of food and drink and noise.
in january, we went to a birthday party in Holland MI for Jacob's bday. the party was at an inflatable bouncy house place. the slides were huge and both kent and i were amazed that samira loved going down the scary things. we realized at this party that we are really old. we are pretty sure that this is just the beginning of feeling old too, which makes us old and sad!

samira and pierce are having a great time getting to know leila. Pierce's first non-mom/dad/sito word was leila! he loves seeing her and she seems to really like trying to communicate with both of them. we are all very glad that sam and jese moved home. sammie turned 32 this past week and we were able to celebrate his b-day at my house.

so i am thinking february should be called the party planning month. of course, people who are my age shouldn't need a party every year but i am going to try to find a way to celebrate my birthday again this year. and since tori (my niece) is having 43 kids at my mom's for her 13th birthday party we will not be having samira's party at my mom's house. instead we are going to have a low-key, small party here at our house. which of course everyone without kids probably thinks is the only appropriate way to have a party for a 4 yr old anyway.

our house is still on the market. i have personally adopted the everything-happens-for-a-reason (crap) philosophy. not fully embraced it though. we are of course still happy to have a house and all that blah blah blah but we would like to re-locate to the west side. anyone who has been to laporte but isn't from laporte will tell you that there is no real distinction in a part of town when you can drive through the entire town in less than 6 minutes. we, however, feel strongly about the other side of town so we are hanging on to hope.

kent's summer is booking up with gigs and that is supposed to make me happy. people who are pleased to know they will be single-parenting all through the summer months have little in common with me. i am going to be looking for one great go-to activity and spending any amount of money perfecting it all summer long! any ideas would be appreciated!

for our anniversary, sam and jess came to watch the kiddos so we could go to dinner and we had a wonderful time. we love to talk about and remember the days when we did whatever we wanted and were not ruled by how long s or p would "last" in a given situation.

finally, i would like to say that even though parenting almost kills both kent and me on a daily basis, we love these little people and they bring laughter and sillyness to our lives all the time. samira asks great questions and pierce is learning to say "hi". very simply, they are unbelievable and can turn on you in half a second. but then they turn back and they are sweet and you forget why you wanted to sell them. (it would actually be more like rent, we would take them back eventually).

go green

we're getting pretty excited!!

our house is getting pretty full of the spirit of Christmas. samira had a great time at her preschool party where she and P got to meet and chat with santa. she sang songs, which she now sings around the house quite a bit! we also have a house guest that has been with us since early december and will leave just before christmas eve. his name is Christopher Pop-in-kins and he is an elf. he was sent to our house by santa on a special project to observe good behavior before santa brings presents to our house. sounds crazy that i'm writing this as though my three yr old might read it! Every night after the kids go to bed, kent finds a new, high hiding place for chris in the house and the second samira's eyes open in the morning she says, "can i go find christopher?" another great addition to our lives from the fujas!

on wednesday, samira and i went to auntie liz and uncle steven's to get involved in the cookie making fun. liz was great about letting samira help out. she unwrapped hershey's kisses and decorated gingerbread men! she had a great time.

kent is playing at an indoor water park again on christmas eve, and i am not complaining. mostly because he will be getting free passes and i know we will love going there as a family when he is available to be with us and not working.

samira knows how to use skype, which is a computer program that allows us to video chat with people around the world. she loves to call her sito and then monopolize the computer for hours while she sits and talks to her. i have a feeling we will own two macbooks at some point!

last weekend our neighbor girl, Chloe, turned 8 and she had her party at State Line Stables where all the kids were able to ride horses. i have to admit i really thought samira was going to be all talk! "i love horses!" one of those girls, but i soon found out that she really does love horses and she was not at all afraid of a horse 10 times her size. She looked graceful and natural while riding her horse and talked about him all the way home. it was easily the best birthday party we've been to!

Our home is back on the market. it was only off for a brief moment in time! we were considering some other options so we took it off the market but reconsidered and we are now more motivated than ever. i'm not even sure what that means but we keep saying, "make us an offer!"

wish you could see/hear what i do

right now samira is still sleeping (unheardof) and p is laying on the carpet in the play room eating one of the birds on the birdbath toy he loves. the house is quiet and still picked up from last night. i am thinking we should start keeping the kids up late and then we can sleep in!

thanksgiving this year was more like "turkey day" than ever before for me. i should try to explain that. kent played at an indoor water park in Gurnee IL on thanksgiving day. which is, of course, fine because we like work! but that meant i was at my mom's with little back up. p took a nap and didn't wake up until everyone was at dinner. then we went down to join the fam at the table and p didn't want anything to do with sitting in his chair to eat. so i ate about three bites of turkey and two pieces of sweet potato and the table was cleared. now anyone who knows me knows that i can afford to skip a meal but on a day that is centered around food it's not really fun to go home thinking i might drive through burger king!

the highlight of my weekend was definitely time spent with kent and our friends. rose came home for a surprise visit and we were feeling very special bc she spent a block of time with us on her short trip. we are looking forward to seeing her and the family over the christmas break. samira really misses sam lees ( she uses his full name all the time). she won't want him to go when they're here. she has been asking a lot of questions that test her dad and me and our ability to spin things. questions like, "why did daryn leave michigan city? If marley grows up too much will she even remember me when i see her again?" these past few months have been filled with people in and out of her life and she is working hard at trying to make sense of all of it.

pierce is so much fun. fun is the word we are using to describe it anyway. he is adventurous and he climbs on everything. it's hard to imagine the things we should be protecting him from but he always finds them and shows them to us. we are so happy that he and his sis get along so well.

we had a great dinner last night that was not wasted on chasing around a small or screaming child. my sister is great with pierce and so she stayed home with him while we went out with friends. this morning samira told her sito she got to go the restaurant because she had good behavior in the store. it's possible we are on overload with the explanation of things. i'm going ot work on that. someday.

and finally, i have to admit i am a little sad bc i failed to get our christmas cards out before i received one. i'll try again next year.

samira sleeps over

so samira stayed at steven and liz's last night and then she is going to church with them this morning and back home sometime later on. yesterday she informed kent and me that, if they asked her to, she would go ahead and stay at the sawaya house forever, after all, they don't have a little girl.

to which i replied that she is my little girl and it's not my fault that they don't have a little girl of their own and she said "mom, that's not nice." since she did not call me before bedtime, i called her and she was making cookies and eating dinner and deciding on a color of frosting. she sounded somewhat interested in talking to me but then remembered she was having way more fun with steven.

when we went up to bed i asked kent to make sure we had a phone upstairs and that the ringer was on just in case she wanted to come home in the middle of the night. that did not happen. i'm pretty sure she would make good on the staying-forever-if-asked deal!



yesterday was a sad day. we said goodbye to our friends for a while. gwen and jeff and the kids left for utah this morning where they will stay so that they can be together again. anyone that knows me knows that i was not cut out for single parenting so watching gwen parent both the little girls has been a good lesson.

we got to hang out for a while yesterday, after trick or treating together on friday night. that was also a good time.

leila is getting so big and it seems to be happening very quickly. she's just a little more than four weeks old and it's hard to imagine my kids as tiny as she is now. p and mira love to be around leila and we are lucky that sam and jess don't mind the cousins all over the little babe!

looking forward to a victorious election day soon. i seriously cannot imagine losing this election. i even got to chat with some canvass-ers yesterday in the coffee shop in michigan city and they seemed hopeful but seriously motivated to stay on the voters right up until the last moments of tuesday. which is also what i will be doing. i am working at the Dem office in LP on tuesday from 3-? to help out in the last few hours. then planning our move to canada if we live in four more years of republican regime.

go green

so many things, so much time...flies!

this weekend we had mom's 60th bday party. it was really a great time. everyone seemed to have fun. i intended to take samira and p trick or treating but failed at that. turns out (as anyone around me knows too well) i am not a very good single parent. it's good and bad that kent slows down right around this time of year. when he's gone the kids and i miss his company (and help) a lot!

we are very excited about christmas and the holiday season. i am seriously so anxious about the election that i can hardly stand to think about it anymore so we (samira and i) have decided to change our focus to the holidays! we have kaity fuja to thank for that. she is using her amazing talent to create personal holiday cards for anyone interested and we are very interested! i am looking to be the first card that everyone receives! this is a yearly goal so if we don't succeed this year we'll be trying again next year! (we didn't meet this goal last year btw)

pierce is growing up so fast. he insists that he feed himself all the time. we are sometimes concerned that he doesn't eat enough because not much food gets in his mouth but he has a great time. he gets into almost anything you might not want him to. both kids are going to need their own iphone soon. i say that jokingly but in a way it's true. they know how to use them and samira has a few matching games on my phone along with home videos that we put on it. it's great to have her stay happy in the car when she can entertain herself.

go green

i need to get motivated

just as my friend predicted, i have not been to the Y since week two of my handy membership. but, alas, it seems as though i will always be out of shape so there's plenty of time to workout later.  

samira and pierce are at a very fun age right now.  they are getting easier to take out into the world and they seem more interested in many adventures.  it helps when you frame everything in as an adventure, then they think even going to Als is a great time.  Samira loves going grocery shopping and keeps us in check about not going to Walmart.  she knows that there is some reason we are against walmart for food but not other things but she can't really grasp the ideology behind it.  there's time for that in the future.  

i went on her first official preschool field trip with her to a pumpkin patch.  turns out a simple corn maze can be a little scary.  we ended up coming out the entrance.  we even picked out a pumpkin and tore it off the vine (did you know they were "vine" vegetables?)  samira's criteria for a good pumpkin was very similar to mine "that one's too dirty mommy"  love her!

fake school starts soon

so samira is going back to the same preschool that she went to last year.  she is excited about it and so are we.  we are trying to fall into a new routine.  one where kent takes the kids to three (sometimes four) different places each day he is home with them.  it doesn't suck at all.  i have to pick out clothes for both of the munchkins each night to plan for the next days activities.  that's more of a chore that it sounds like due to the length of time it takes me to do laundry.  as a result, my kids have a lot of clothing.  and i'm not sure if you know what that means, more laundry.  it's a vicious cycle i tell you!

on saturday we went to the Shedd Aquarium in chicago.  samira and pierce had a great time.  they really liked seeing all the fish.  at the time it seemed liked most of the population of north america was at the place.  that's to say it was slightly overwelming.  but the little people didn't even notice.  i saw a shirt i really regret not buying at the gift shop.  and the fact that i am still talking about it five days later really sucks!  i usually never pass up the opportunity to spend money, especially if the man is next to me saying go ahead buy it.  

we ate at the food court-like area and surprisingly it had some great choices for s and p friendly food.  blueberries, yogurt, cheese duck shaped crackers, even organic pudding.  (i know kaity, that last statement was not actually a sentence)  we got sushi from our favorite place on the way home.  in retrospect, it seems wrong that we ate that much fish after spending the day looking at fish.  (but to quote a silly girl i know, we wouldn't eat so much sushi if they didn't make it so tasty)

before leaving for chicago we had a photo shoot.  kent has a pic of himself at about 6 (i say at least 8) months old sitting at his dad's drums so we brought up the rosewood set and took hundreds of pics with the new camera.  p loves drums.  

btw, pictures still not in the order i want them in and i'm getting kind of bitter.

 

go green