My Caffine Addiction

Cody and I have decided to give up pop..... Ugh, this is more difficult then I would have ever imagined. I love pop! So why give it up? Well I think it may have something to do with both of our expanding waste lines. Also, pop is so easy, you don't have do go and fill it up, or mix it, it is right there ready for you to drink. But the more we drink the more Connor wants to drink it too. We don't want him having bad habits like us so we figured that if we were going to say no to him having soda, we better give it up as well. :( I will probably thank him some day though!
Like I said, giving up soda is more difficult than we thought. After I got over the initial caffeine headaches I am a lot better, but I still crave it. My parents drink soda like it is going out of style.. Always have! I would like to blame this on them. I grew up in a home with pop always available to me.
 I have however noticed that I am more active, I think soda kind of weighs you down. Now I have resorted to drinking water, hot tea, juice.. One day at a time!

Coming Back Home!

In my previous posts I mentioned getting back to Moorhead. Well our dream is finally coming true! Cody got a job transfer there and we are expected to get back there some time this summer! The timing couldn't be better! I will graduate in May, Connor is going to start kindergarten in the fall, and I will have enough time to find Reese a daycare if I find a job before then. We haven't figured out what we are going to do about living arrangements yet but we have time! I don't know who is more excited, us or our families!
We moved to Marshall January of 2011, so we have been here a little over a year and a half. The four hour drive back home is hard and it will be nice only being an hour from our families!Plus they make frequent trips to Fargo/Moorhead so we will actually get some visitors rather than having to travel back home all of the time.  Connor still thinks that if we are moving we should be moving to Pinehurst.. That isn't an option at the moment so he'll just have to settle with being closer to his Grandma's, Grandpa's and cousins! We will get to see all of them a lot more often!
It seems like a long time to wait but moving day will be here before we know it! We have so much going on (or at least I will) with student teaching, graduation, kids, Cody's transfer, finding a house, getting Connor registered for KINDERGARTEN, and finding Reesey daycare, not to mention the actual move.. Whaa I am getting tired just thinking about it!

First Snow!

We got our first snow here in Marshall Yesterday. Connor was so excited. Usually I am not one who looks forward to the snow and cold weather but seeing the smile on his face I couldn't help but get excited too. He didn't get much of a winter to enjoy last year, I think I can count on one hand the  number of times he got to go out and play in the snow. Poor boy, so yesterday we went out and had a snowball fight, made a snowman, and had some hot chocolate! While doing it I thought it was a little silly to be doing this in October but I figured the snow wouldn't last so we better enjoy it while we have it, knowing the Minnesota extremes it will probably be 80 degrees next week!
Like everything else in my life I waited till the last minute to get Connor some winter gear. So before we went outside we had to go to the store to buy him new boots, snow pants, and gloves (My father, the king of "survival kits" would be ashamed!). While we were picking his stuff out I didn't think his smile could get any bigger! He was so excited! Here is a picture of him yesterday morning when he realized how much snow was actually on the ground!

Pinehurst

This semester has been a slower one for me. With mostly online classes it feels like every weekend is fall break! Cody works 4 ten hour shifts a week which makes every weekend a long weekend! This weekend we are going to go back to my families resort. My parents have owned the resort since 2000, and before that it was owned by my grandparents, and before that my great-grandparents owned it. So it is pretty special. My brother and brother are in line to take it over when my parents decide to retire.
The resort is called Pinehurst, it is located in Northern Minnesota in a little town called Naytahwaush. It is about 45 miles north of Detroit Lakes. So to get home on the weekends we drive four hours one way.. Luckily we have long weekends so it makes the drives a little more bearable. I have also gotten Cody into books on tape! He doesn't read for pleasure so for me, this was a pretty big feat! My whole family lives at the resort. As I said my brother and brother in-law are going to take it over so my sister and her family own a house, and my brother owns house just down the street from where we grew up! Cody grew up in a town about 30 miles away from my home so when we go home we see ALL of our families! I love it, we are pretty close with our families so it is hard to be away. I am thinking a move is going to be happening in the near future (I hope)!





Here is a picture of the lodge at my parents resort. They also have 16 cabins and many many camping spots for trailers.

The Supper Table

Since I have been staying home with the kids lately I have had time to prepare our supper daily. While I was in school it seemed like through the hustle and bustle I wasn't able to take my time and prepare the nice meals that I would have liked to. It was more like "what can I throw together that is fast".  So now I value the time I get to prepare a nice meal and sit down with my family. I think I would enjoy it a lot more if I actually got to eat my supper...
I like to think of my children as my diet enforcers. I prepare a meal every evening. I make Connor a plate, and get Reese some toys to play with so I can actually sit down. That usually occupies her until I take my first bite. Then Connor needs a napkin and we happen to be out, then he needs a milk refill, by the time I have done this Reese is already screaming because she is bored and wants to be held! So like the multitasker mom that I am, I grab Reese and sit down to eat with her on my lap. She is at the age now where she wants to have her hands on everything, so naturally once I sit she's got a hand full of spaghetti. GREAT.
By the time all of this is done, I have a cold plate of food in front of me and not much patients to sit down and eat it. My diet enforcers really take their jobs seriously. :/

Busy Brain

Usually going to sleep helps me shut my brain off. During the hours in which I am awake I am constantly thinking about what I need to get done, I don't know if it is because I am a student and I am always thinking about deadlines, or if it is just a mom thing that always worry about everything. Probably both! Last night I couldn't even escape my busy brain in sleep. I dreamt that I had my first teaching job; I went to school on the first day and realized that I had written no lesson plans, and didn't know where the classroom was. I think this goes back to me always feeling I am forgetting something. For one of my classes I had to sit and do nothing for fifteen minutes. I found myself thinking about all the things that I was going to do after the time was up. I think my brain is wired to worry. That is the only conclusion I can come to. Maybe I will have to work my way up to fifteen minutes and try to train myself to do nothing and not worry for a short time during the day. I’ll start tomorrow! I’ll keep you posted!

Survival of the Fittest

One of the things that I have learned as a mom/student/wife/housekeeper/chef extraordinaire is how to adapt. It seems my whole life goes back to making things work with what I have at the time. I am constantly being tested in my adaptation skills whether and I think someone UP THERE believes that I need to practice this EVERY SINGLE DAY (maybe it’s because of my career choice)! If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. For instance, my salad today, I was so excited to get my Caesar salad at Burger King (they are my favorite), I usually have to bring my supper to school on Monday nights because I have evening classes. I open my salad, get the croutons and dressing on, grab my utensil bag and find that they have only given me a knife to eat it with. What to do? It was either let the salad get soggy and eventually throw it out later (which is basically unacceptable in my book), OR eat the salad with the knife and look like a complete idiot doing so. I chose the latter. I found that eating my salad with a knife made me eat slower which in turn made me full faster. Maybe I will have to eat all my meals with only a knife! Someone at Burger King knew what they were doing!