Our friend Kai's 6th birthday!

What a productive AND fun day it was today. A bevy of errands/appointments were handled this morning, Max actually napped (YES!), we had dinner with some great friends to celebrate their son Kai's 6th birthday, I attended my MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) meeting and a bunch of us went out for happy hour afterward.

Here are some of the pics from today, as I realized that my most recent posts have lacked in the photo department and could be likened more to journal entries than family stories/pics.

L U C K Y

It's St. Patrick's Day, and I feel so lucky. Here's why:


L - Love is something that I'm surrounded by constantly, whether I'm with my family, friends or at work. I am incredibly fortunate to have so many people in my life that love and respect me for who I am, and they don't ask me to try to be anyone or anything else. Not everyone can say that.

U - Unexpected opportunities have arisen in my life at times when I least expected them. I am a firm believer that "everything happens for a reason", so I'm thankful for the amazing people who have crossed my path when I most needed them to and didn't even know it.

C - Coolheadedness. That's right. When all hell breaks loose in my house, at work, or out in public, I have an innate ability to remain calm. Whether or not I feel calm inside is another story, but I'm thankful for my ability to maintain my composure. It's been very beneficial in both my work and personal life.

K - Kindness is something that was instilled upon me at an early age by both of my parents, as they led by example. My knee-jerk reaction is to treat everyone with kindness and for that I have my folks' examples to thank. I try every day to instill the same values into my kiddos.

Y - Youth. I may be halfway to 70 years old, but I'm still young and healthy enough to make major changes in my life so that I can live the rest of my life on my family's terms. I am open to new opportunities and inspired to make the most of each day that I'm given.


Take a few moments to reflect on all of the reasons in your life you have to be grateful, and consider how LUCKY you are!!!

St. Patty's Day Eve

Both kids were down for the night. At least I thought so. I walked down the hall toward our bedroom to climb into bed when Lily spotted me and said in a whisper-shout, "Mom, come here!" She started by asking for a small drink of water, which I got for her and she gulped down. She then proceeded to tell me that her Unicorn pillow pet's birthday (her name is Amelia) is tomorrow, and that her party is a night party (unlike her friend Kai's party, which is really tomorrow morning) and, in fact, a slumber party. Amelia is 10 years old, and she's asked for a friend to play with for her birthday, one that is just a little bit younger than she is...then Lily informed me that her stuffed cat, named Lucifer, is actually 100 years old. "Can you believe that?", she asked me. I told her that I found that truly amazing. Then I told her it was time to go to sleep, as she has a big day ahead of her. I wished her a good night, and a Happy St. Patrick's Day, as I'll be at work when she wakes up in the morning.

I love listening to Lily right before bed and right after she wakes up in the morning; those times are when her imagination is most vivid.

Ten minutes later, I hear a knock on my bathroom door while I'm brushing my teeth. It's Lily, and her eyes are as bright as they get on Christmas morning. This time, she tells me about her friends Patrick and Jacqueline at school and how they put out a school art project for a leprechaun to come to their house and bring them a treasure. All I'm thinking is "holy moly, please don't be asking me to get crafty after 9pm when you should be sleeping". She continues, and I'd swear she's emphasizing her blinks xso that I can't say no to those big blue eyes. She tells me that they made the project at school, so we retriever her backpack. We placed her decorated leprechaun, the gold-glittered shamrock and her note to the leprechaun on one of the green plastic kids' stools in the living room, since, as I reasoned, the leprechaun would prefer it be on a green stool over the blue one. I felt as though we were setting out cookies for Santa, yet was wondering what in the heck this "leprechaun" was going to bring, as this was just sprung on it. She also asked whether or not I thought the leprechaun was going to pee in her bathroom again, as he has for the past 2 years (green food coloring in the toilet and we have an instant leprechaun visitor). I told her that he probably would, because he likes to stop at all of the green houses (which ours is) and pee. They are his favorite. She got excited and said, "what if the leprechaun walked into my room and saw my walls??? They're green! He'd probably kiss them and want to marry them!" I shook my head, smiled at Lily and told her she'd better get to bed so the leprechaun can come.

I remembered that we have an unopened bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans in the kitchen, so I scurried downstairs to my crafty stuff and obtained a small circular box to put them in, so they appear to have arrived by way of a small leprechaun. I told Brian, "See? all of my seemingly useless crafty stuff just came in handy!"

I work tomorrow at 6am, but before I leave the house, I'll be leaving a little treasure by the note on the table and dropping some green food coloring in the kids' toilet.

Then it'll be off to serve up coffee for the day in my little green apron!

HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!!!

GOOD GRIEF

It's been 8 1/2 months since my father passed away. I attended a 6-week grief support group in Nov/Dec that helped me deal with my grief and provided a great network for me. There is a monthly drop-in session at Evergreen Hospital that I attended this evening and I feel incredible. I can equate it to working out at the gym; some days ANYTHING sounds better than getting my workout gear on and exercising, but I ALWAYS feel better afterward. I'm beginning to look forward to these grief groups for the comaraderie and connection I feel with the others there. We all help each other through our own unique journeys with grief, and it's a safe place to feel vulnerable and to check in on our status, whether we've just had a good day or not. Either way, it's acceptable.

Losing a loved one is hard. Nobody enjoys the sadness, the void left or the loneliness and heartache that comes along with it. I'm thankful, however, for this grief group that I was introduced to. I would recommend a group like this to anyone who has suffered a loss of a loved one and could use the support.

Good grief, has it helped me!!!

Drizzly, gray Wednesday afternoon

It's just another day in paradise (something my Dad used to frequently say), with the weather still a bit too chilly for the middle of March, if you ask me. The sky is gray and Max keeps asking, "where is Mr. Sun?" I have to tell him that Mr. Sun is hiding behind the clouds but that he really, really would like to come out soon and help make us warm. Hopefully in a month or so...

This has been a most wonderful day. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened, but let me explain a typical Wednesday in our household.

The kids woke up around 7:30am as Brian was getting ready for work. We all got up and began talking about the breakfast menu. Max's favorite is blue pancakes and Lily usually likes Eggo waffles, but today, the kids wanted the new Hot Chocolate w/ Marshmallow flavored Pop Tarts that Brian brought home as a sample from drugstore.com (as a nice little job perk, he brings home a plethora of samples, from soap to skin care products, to...Pop Tarts!) They each ate one, with a side of fruit and some milk and were good to go. Brian kissed the family goodbye and headed out the door. Max and I got Lily dropped off at school and then came back home for a bit before my 10:30am yoga class up at Vision Quest, my local gym that is 1.5 miles away. He and I try to make it to the gym 3-4 times a week, where he gets to hang out in the play room with Kris, Katie and the other little kiddos' whose parents are taking care of their health. Today I did my yoga class, then sat in the sauna to sweat and to warm myself up (because it's so chilly outside, I like to close my eyes and pretend that I'm on a tropical beach somewhere...and hey, it's included in my membership, so why not take advantage of another opportunity to sweat?)

Max and I returned home a bit after noon and he watched one episode of Dragon Tales while I got lunch ready. He ordered up "peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat", so I got that ready, with a side of Pirate's Booty and some grapes. I made my favorite lunch of 3 scrambled eggs and a slice of toast (made with Dave's Killer Bread). Max always swipes the first bite of my toast, then returns it to my plate for me to eat. He has no interest in my scrambled eggs. We have quite the routine set up, and I love that I have this opportunity to spend so much 1-on-1 time with Max, a luxury I didn't have with Lily at this age, because we had her plugged into full-time day care while I slaved away at a job in a cubicle that I lost a little more passion for each day.

After lunch, Max and I went to the bathroom where he peed on the big-boy potty (hurray!) and he got a jelly bean. We've just begun the potty-training and we're working on trying to be a bit more consistent in asking him if he'd like to try. We then retired to our room to read a book and watch a show before nap time. He chose "The little engine that could", one of my childhood favorites and the book that Lily brought home from the school library this week. Along with the great message about helping others and maintaining a positive attitude ("I think I can, I think I can..."), the illustrations are beautiful and use nice bold colors. Max chose to watch a show called "Poppy Cat", then I put him down for his nap and came out to clean up some dishes.

After 20 minutes, I could still hear him chatting to himself, so I went and "re-tucked" him in and told him he ought to close his eyes and take a little snooze. 20 minutes later, I repeated this, and as I type this blog post, I can see the drizzle of rain still coming down, the jazz music is softly playing on my iPod in the kitchen, and there is a low hum of Max still conversing with himself and/or the stuffed animals in his crib. Seeing as it's 3:05pm and Lily will be released from her jump-rope club at 3:30pm, it looks like Max will be joining me for pick-up. We have an amazing neighbor named Sarah who will come over and "Max sit", we call it, where her only task is to sit in my living room on the couch and read or snooze while I go to school to pick up Lily. This only occurs when Max is napping, which it appears he's going to pass on today, so Sarah's off the hook. I give her a daily 3:10pm status update. :)

After I have the kids home, I'll get them an after-school snack, work on some homework with Lily (she's got a monthly calendar with one activity to perform each day), then get dressed for work at Starbucks (5:15-10pm shift)and drop the kids off at my mom's house around 5pm, where she'll feed them dinner and Brian will join them for dinner after work. My older brother Jere is going to be there tonight, so it will be nice for the kids to hang out with him and wear him out.

OK, I'd probably better wrap this up, as I'm still in my yoga clothes and need to change for our walk in the rain. I wonder if all of my posts will be this long? Apparently I have a lot to say, and I had NO IDEA it was all waiting in there to come out in a blog post.

Off to enjoy the rest of this gorgeous Seattle afternoon...

My blogs have been merged!

Believe it or not, I actually created a family blog back in January 2010 with every intention of keeping up on it. I didn't, therefore I gave up on it and let it sit.

Going back and reading those posts, I've decided to merge them into this new blog of mine, with the handy post option of scheduling the date and time to make it look as though the posts actually took place on this blog a few years back. The name of that blog was theroudebushfamily instead of RoudeReview, and I prefer the latter for a few reasons: (a) I love alliteration and (b) it's a little less generic. Not that there's anything wrong with a generic name, it's just not my preference at this time for my current blog.

That said, I feel a bit more complete and happy that some of the history has been captured in this blog. If you are interested in reading those old posts, just check my blog archive along the right side and you can have at 'em.

Moving forward....

Welcome to my humble little blog!

Some of you may know this (and others are about to find out), but I have been a wanna-be blogger for quite some time.  I would hear friends talking about their blogs or saying, "man, I want to blog about that" and I'd always mentally make a note to start blogging myself.  The problem was that I just never got around to taking action.

Here it is.  This is my blog, and it's quite rudimentary at this point, but I hope that it becomes more and more profound and fascinating as time goes on.  I'm also realistically expecting about 4-5 people to actually read it, so it won't be written with a massive audience in mind!

The main reasons I want to blog:

• To record and be able to reflect upon the events that take place in our family's life, both milestones and everyday shenanigans that I'd think I'd remember but would promptly forget if not documented.
• I'd like my kids to be able to read my blog someday and know what their life was like when they were little, the things their mom pondered, reveled in and struggled with.
• To keep those family and friends updated on our family's goings-on that care to know more than just the major stuff posted on Facebook.

There will most certainly be more blog posts to come, I'm just really excited to have started (all thanks to my friend Lori who is a super-blogger and is sitting right next to me as I prepare to post my first blog...she said I can't leave her house without my first post!)

OK, I have nothing profound left to add.....ENJOY MY BLOG & PICS!!!