Oh the Bliss!

Just last week I had the SO FUN (and kind of random) opportunity of talking with four sweet mommy friends at different times and places (and texts) and all of us pretty much said same thing; we're trying really hard to get to the heart of parenting and simplify our lives so we can give a clear representation of Jesus to our children. While that sentence makes it sound basic and pretty and tied up in a sweet little bow the reality of that desire is rather laborious, time consuming, humbling, and a lot of times exhausting. But instead of leaving those conversations burdened or disappointed I left spurred on and excited! We have been given this gift, this blessing - not the worldly view of blessing as luck, but a God spoken blessing. It is an honor to have this job. And in the squabble breaking, whine banning, and another drink of water giving we get to show Jesus's heart, character, love, grace and yes, discipline to these precious gifts. When my kid spills his cup of milk ag...

 Have I mentioned how proud I am of the creative marketing team at Fitzpatrick + Prince Real Estate?   My husband, the uber talented and ultimate entrepreneur Mark Fitzpatrick, has been blessed with some pretty incredible videographers, editors and marketing gurus over at FPRE. And when they all come together beautiful and innovative marketing videos are made. You may remember this award winning video.... Nice stuff, eh? I think a lot of real estate groups do videos, some even do good ones, but NONE of them - try as they may - meet this caliber of professionalism, artistry, and killer marketing skills. Of course, I might be a little biased. Or maybe I'm not. After seeing the above video representatives from Pretend City  wanted FPRE to create a short video that would be shown at their Fundraising Gala. Something that would capture the beauty, and necessity, of children playing and playing pretend. The creative marketing team came up with this, and I don't think,...

Late Saturday night, at the women's retreat a few weekends ago, some friends and I were sitting around a table stuffing our faces, I mean - politely nibbling on some outrageously delicious food, when a gal in our gang noticed one of our friends had left and not returned. Her bag was there, cell phone, food, everything, but she was not. No biggie, we kept eating, but the minutes passed and she didn't come back, so we kind of started looking around for her, stretching our necks this way and that, but didn't see her anywhere. Soon we started checking bathrooms, our room, any other room we thought she might be in. She's a super cute, petite, Filipino chick and I was beginning, just beginning, to think something had happened. We walked up and down, in and out of halls and doorways looking and asking about her, but she just wasn't anywhere. We were  this close to lighting torches, linking arms, and calling the National Guard when lo and behold there was our friend, just...

~ Watching the girls make their commercial debut and cracking up at Mia's "happy" and "sad" faces. I can't wait for it to be finished so I can show everyone! ~ Ben making pumpkin muffins for the family pretty much all on his own. I was blessed by him so many times this week... he is such a cool kid. :) ~ Being blessed by a dear friend who took the "room mom" reigns while I was super sick and pulled together last minute details for me. ~ Discovering ways Tristan looks or acts like members of our family. He hates to have his feet covered and always finds a way to get them to stick out of everything, just like Mark. He sneezes really loud, like my dad. He has a gigantic smile, like Troy. ~ Running into a friend in the parking lot of Trader Joe's just after a challenging phone call regarding visitations with T's mom. I am still blown away at God's sweet gifts to his children and I count that meeting as one of them because of ALL...

No shock here, foster care is difficult. It's a roller coaster of emotions. I saw the roller-coaster, I chose to get on the roller-coaster - twice, even - and now right now, in this moment, I'm not really loving the roller-coaster. I never know who to cheer for  - his mom when she has victories, or us when we do. One day I'm renaming him and the next day I'm packing his bags. Up and down, up and down I go. I was sitting across from her last week, watching her hold my, no her, (maybe our?) baby and I was kind of fuming. I really was. I felt like crossing my arms and huffing and puffing something about how easy she has it, just showing up to hold a cute baby for two hours, while I'm exhausted from being up three times a night with him, washing and refilling his bottles all day. . . I really - in my grossly sinful self - wanted to let her have it. And a truth speaking friend texted me...  " Do nothing from  selfish ambition or  conceit, but in  humilit...

We weren't supposed to make it. We were, I think she said, "a divorce waiting to happen". And the other guy sighed, it's not a big deal, I was his "starter wife". Even I was a little afraid. I'd never been one to finish things I start, and I'd never been in a relationship longer than 6 months. Our wedding day was 6 months after the day we met. We were supped to fail. BUT GOD, in his sovereignty, knew my fickle heart and gave me a man that grounded it. He knew I was immature so he gave me a man with a looooooooong fuse and a gentle answer. He knew I was afraid of failure so he gave me a man who didn't have the word divorce in his vocabulary.  When we met, that very first night, I knew right away I would know Mark for a very long time. I just knew it. So when the event that brought us together again took place I was not surprised. I wasn't surprised when he told his mom, the day after our first phone call, he'd met the girl...

There is a general consensus among myself and my friends that we are feeling tired and busy, and tired of being busy. We've swam, we've vacayed, we've reunioned* with family. We've gotten sandy and sticky and dirty and burnt. We've stayed up late and refused to sleep in. We are tired. School starts too soon. If you're a homeschooling family, or a partial one like us, then there is curriculum to purchase, lesson plans to familiarize yourself with, workspaces to organize and make functional. We have uniforms to size, totes to order, binders to fill and even some pre start-of-school memorization to tackle. And meetings! GOOD NIGHT we have meetings.  6 meetings in 10 days. Teacher meetings, parent meetings, parent-teacher meetings. AYSO for Ben, American Heritage Girls for Addie, plus Tristan meets with his mom twice a week so that's even more meetings. Last week I had a day where I was a taxi driver. I drove to Newport Beach, Carson, San Clemente and al...

 I've been thinking about foster care and how the addition of a foster child has a pretty significant ripple effect. There are so many people involved in this little baby's life. And because we say yes, a lot of other people have to say yes too, whether they choose to or not. We ask our kids to say yes to another sibling. Our parents to another grandchild. Our family to another nephew or cousin. Our friends to more chaos. Our church to another sheep to tend. Our babysitter to another charge. All over the place we are putting this baby out there for others to take in as we have, all the while not knowing how long he'll be around or how attached to get. We tell you; love him like we love him, and it's a lot to ask. Thank you . Because he could be gone tomorrow, or in a month, or in a year. He could rip your heart out, and that hurts. He's family now, but we all know he's not really family, not really , and you might not know what to do with that. Thank ...

I had some email issues recently and it was ugly. I would receive emails in bulk, or not at all. I had no record of sent emails or deleted ones. It was a hot mess of technology and something had to be done. My sweetie-pie husband, who spends large sums of money on only three things: The spreading of the gospel, really high quality food, and Apple products, deemed it time to buy me a new laptop and I was hoping it would solve the email debacle. It didn't.  He tried to stop the madness and figured almost all of it out except for one annoying problem, every email from as far back as who knows when was now in my inbox. 7, 892 emails. Seven thousand eight hundred ninety two emails IN my inbox. And I couldn't just go through and delete them all at the same time because some were recent, some I had never seen before, some had pictures from when the big kids were little and the little kids were tiny (or nonexistent) and even though I'm sure they're saved s...

After Mark and I married he got LASIK to correct his vision and this many years later he still says it's some of the best money he's ever spent. So when we attended a benefit dinner for a ministry we support and saw one of the big ticket items was laser eye surgery preformed by one of the best LASIK surgeons in the country and all pre and post-op visits with one of the best optometrists in Orange County he jumped on the chance to spoil me with better-than-perfect vision as well. Here's how it went down: ~ Met with Dr. Nota at San Clemente Optometry . He did lots of easy tests to determine if LASIK was for me. (I had been told a few years ago that I wasn't a good candidate - basically because I had been pregnant or nursing a baby for, oh, six years... thus there was never a good time for me to have the procedure.) He asked what I was looking forward to most about having better vision, I told him I was really exited to be able to look across the park and see my kids ...

He thinks he's so cool. He is. He thinks he's too awesome for pictures. He's not. He thinks I don't see him. I do. This one, my oldest, is so, so, so incredibly loved. And I am so, so, so incredibly thankful for him.

My pal Karen (I link to her blog a lot because she has really thoughtful, intelligent, thorough posts on current themes in most women's lives, and I like that) recently wrote a great little piece on the book Fifty Shades of Grey. I was one of the ones "in hiding" (which I took no offense to because I'm in hiding regarding a lot of current events/fads etc.) because I didn't know what she was talking about at first. After reading her post I recalled a few friends maybe mentioning it here and there, or comics parodying the book, and me not knowing what they were talking about but smiling and nodding. This is not a book I want to smile and nod at. I like the challenges Karen put out there for us as believers to be ready with a biblical defense. So when ladies in my small group or in the line at Trader Joe's or on the soccer field (Ben's, not mine) start talking about the book I will have an opinion based on the Bible, not on what I think - which is always...

(Well that's a sad title.) I never posted the afterthoughts of saying goodbye to our little Nicolas... It's taken me this long to figure out what to share, what not to share, who to share it with etc., but sweetie-pie people, people who prayed so hard, and gave so much, and loved him even though they didn't know how long we'd have him, are asking about him. So I'll do my best to answer...  How did saying goodbye go?  How is he doing?  How are we doing? Will we do it again? When? I LOVE talking about him, and fostering, and adoption (though I don't know nearly enough of that aspect -yet) so if I don't cover it here PLEASE ask!! Also, I realize this post is longer than most of you are willing to read in one sitting, so I highlighted the answers if you want the Cliff Notes version - and not any of the juicy details, you instant gratification junkies you. Saying goodbye was easier than I thought it was going to be , and I totally give credit for ...

Can someone please give me an iPhone case? I can not tell you how much time I've wasted on Amazon trying to pick one out. I've been looking for MONTHS. If there were only two to choose from I'd be fine, but there are THOUSANDS. Click on one and five more "you might be interested in" pop up. Why, yes, I AM interested, thank you. Then, five MORE pop up. Then five more, then five more, then five MORE... Hours, people, I've wasted hours. I am super indecisive. It's the same reason I hate shopping. There are too many types of EVERYTHING! That's why I've had a personal shopper (Read: Mother-In-Law) pick out all of my clothes for the last 9.7 years. Mother-in-law! Who would've thought, right? But she does a pretty spot on job of picking out clothes for me from her "special stores" (read: garage sales) and I don't complain. I digress... Here are my requirements for iPhone case: ~ Nothing lame. Oh, you need more? ~ Noth...

I boiled a cat's head.  It was an accident, I swear, I didn't mean to! I thought it was a rabbit's head, which in my mind somehow makes it okay. But boiling a cat's head is NOT okay.  My son made me do it?  I mean, My son made me do it!  We were at our favorite park which has a little creek running through it and sometimes when I'm feeling kind of cool, I'll let the kids walk down near the creek. Every now and then, when I'm feeling really cool, I'll let my kids walk in the creek. But yesterday I must've been feeling like Ultimate Cool Mom because when Ben found a skeleton head of a "rabbit" it was MY idea to bring it home.  ---There goes my "my son made me do it" defense---  I had visions of playing the paleontologist I had once longed to be (that's not true) with my kids as we uncovered the truth about this poor little dead rodent. Then we uncovered that it wasn't a rodent. After three hours of boiling t...

First we had this Then we had this And today we have this... Addison got her thumb nearly ripped off in the slamming of a bathroom door (ahem, Troy may have played a part, cough cough). It was so nasty I didn't take a close of picture of it. And while Addison LOVES to show off her new little splint thing, protecting her numerous stitches and itty-bitty break, she does NOT like to talk about what happened. Her thumb looks like a robot thumb, thus her self-dubbed new name "Robo". Shout out to Mark who swooped in to save the day - again- when he rushed home and took Addison to the ER for me. I'm SO glad he was able to do that because from what I hear it was pretty gruesome in there. We spent the evening treating Addison like the princess she was born to be. I told Ben not to look so peppy. . . odds are he's next.

We were lucky enough to have Daddy take a half-day at work on Friday, so we headed to the La Habra Children's Museum. I used to go there when I was little and let me tell you, not too much has changed. :-) It was such a fun time with our little family. My favorite part may have been the meal we had prior to the museum. We stopped at what we thought was a little taco place but when we walked through the door it turned out to be a big sit down restaurant. We had already gotten all the kids out of the car so we felt committed. It was SO good! And the kids were lovely as well, which - I'm fairly confident -makes food taste even better. Would someone please teach this girl how to properly use markers already? Seriously, does she ever have supervision? Husbands are working hard these days. I hardly know of a wife who would disagree. Extra hours, weekend stuff, its some tough times trying to get everything done AND be a present husband and dad. How Mark has two and a half jobs and sti...

I have an idea who you might be, but I have no idea when Nicolas will go "home" with you, so I thought I'd write you a letter now to be sure I get everything down before I blink and he's gone. Here is my list of do's and don'ts for this precious gift, (you know he's a precious gift, right?) please follow this list in it's entirety. Don't let him take more than one bite of food at a time. Have him sign "more please" when he's finished chewing. When he's done eating, have him sign "All done", he can sign because he's super smart, did you know that? Practice what noises different animals make. Have him play Simon Says with you. Play different music and dance with him, he is a great dancer! Take him to the park every day if you can. He loves the swings, but don't let him stay in the swings the whole time you're there. Don't let him snack the whole time you're there either, make him run and climb and play...