I hate Mondays

There's an extra pang of loneliness that hits me on Monday mornings as my husband gets ready and leaves for work. I felt it several years ago when the girls were still babies/preschoolers and now that we've moved my hatred of lonely Mondays is back. Don't get me wrong, one of the blessings in life I'm most grateful for is the opportunity I've had to stay home with my children, but I still really dislike the beginning of Matt's work week. This probably sounds extra whiny given that Matt's office days are only Monday-Thursday, but the beginning of those 4 days bothers me.  So be it.  

Here's how I saved my sanity last week...

We shoved uncooked spaghetti into bites of hot dog, boiled them, and served it for lunch. Julia happily prepped it but wouldn't eat it, Audrey thought it was ok with shredded cheese, and I thought it was bleh... It's appropriate for lonely Monday food to be 'bleh', don't you think?

We also decided to salt paint: Draw designs with white glue, sprinkle with salt, remove excess salt, and then paint with a food dye/water mix.

This project was easy peasy! It was also neat to watch the salt absorb the drops of color.

 How else to entertain on a lonely Monday?!? Well, the girls enjoy card games (and Go Fish, War, and Uno get old) so they learned a few more, Speed and 21 to be exact.  No worries, I didn't spend too much time this week teaching these girls to be card sharks. 

And the last no fail way to entertain for a few minutes... we break out a tea set and have a tea party outside.  

And then apparently bring a hamper full of toys outside too.

Last Monday turned out not to be too bad and this Monday I'm not feeling lonely at all! I'm visiting family in TN! YAY!!!!!

Hike to Little Falls

 We were invited to go with a few other families to take an easy hike up to a little waterfall Wednesday. We were thrilled to have something to do. 

Julia went hiking... hiking!! She squealed every time a branch brushed against her and also when she had to walk through a tiny bit of mud, but good for her for being ready and willing to try something out of her usual comfort zone.  

As we packed our gear for our hike, Audrey insisted she wouldn't want to play so she didn't need to wear a bathing suit.

Momma knows her child, though.  Dry clothes were in our bag.  :)

Despite my warnings, Audrey hiked back down in her flip flops. She didn't get hurt, but she did (very loudly) exclaim repeatedly that the mud she stepped in was actually "Bear POOP on her foot!"

Fun times with new friends!

We've moved

Well, it happened again. The Bowman family has started life in a new city as Matt pastors a new church.

(excuse me while I take a deep, calming breath)

We live in North GA now, and I am handling our move better than I did last time.  (FYI "better than last time" means that I haven't spent every night of the first month crying hysterically while seriously wondering if I need therapy... let's all celebrate.)

 

Things have gone pretty smoothly so far:
* The girls have made several little friends at church.
* We've already checked out the local library and their summer kids activities.
* Extra events at church have helped us get to know members a little faster.
* We've had out of town friends visit already... all others are welcome! Seriously, we're lonely. VISIT US!
Our visitors, Will and Miranda - fabulous people!

* I've only gotten lost in town once.  Unfortunately it was our first night here, it was dark, I was by myself, and googlemaps and I weren't on the same page ... tears did happen that night.
* We've visited Toccoa Falls twice now. The girls love playing on the rocks!

 * Miranda and I (and the big vein in my forehead) had our picture taken with Batman.

So yeah, things are going pretty well. Don't you agree??

Today, I went ahead and made a "Summer: To Do" list for the girls. I did this last year too and am confident it will help keep me from being a completely lazy mom with lazy kids the entire summer.  Water balloons, ice cream sundaes, and different craft projects all made the list.  I also included several science experiments (more ideas welcome), and Matt and I decided to put a trip to the Georgia Aquarium on there too.  Fun!

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day for the Bowman family wasn't quite what we were expecting. The girls were looking forward to class parties, and Matt and I were planning on a lunch date while they were in school.  Julia came down with the stomach flu early Thursday morning, though, and very much needed Friday (Valentine's Day) to recover. So only Audrey got to party with her friends... aren't they cute?

 

Julia was pretty sad about missing her class party, but after getting a few calories in her she felt good enough to enjoy the flowers Daddy brought home. She especially loved that hers were white laced with crimson. (Never forget that this child's a Bama fan!) 

 Audrey loved her flowers too.

 Audrey was thrilled to pose for me all afternoon. Here she is with her box of chocolates.

... and with her heart shaped cake.

...and again because I wasn't too thrilled with the original facial expression. ;)

Finally, dear Julia felt energetic enough to decorate her heart cake as well.

Happy Valentine's Day

2014

8 months later... I'm going to try to keep this up with a blog or 2 a month and will (hopefully) backtrack to cover the 8 missing months. 

2014 hasn't been so great thus far. After a couple of weeks of severe back pain, Matt had surgery January 10th for a partially ruptured disc.  He's doing well as he recovers, but it will still be several weeks before he's back to "normal".

The week of his surgery was (obviously) very painful for him, but I'll readily admit that it was very stressful for me.  No one has ever accused me of handling stress well, and that combined with exhaustion pushed me close to a breakdown for a few days.  The whole situation cemented my yearning to live closer to family. Friends down here made many offers to help out with childcare and food, and I most definitely took advantage of it! It just would have been an extra relief to have our parents or siblings close enough to lean on too.

An early visit from Santa

Since we are visiting TN on Christmas this year, we decided that we'd once again ask Santa to make an early visit to our home. Thankfully, he obliged.

As usual, we sprinkled reindeer food.

We put out carrots for the reindeer and cookies and milk for Santa.

Ok, we actually put out pink lemonade for Santa. The reason being we were soon leaving town for a week, and I didn't want to buy another jug of milk.

 That night, Santa came!! Since it was a few days early, our Elf decided he'd stay and play until Christmas Day. 

Julia's begged for a TV in her room, but I've been pretty adamant about that not happening. Santa and I came to the agreement that she could have the TV and a DVD player - no cable and no wifi connection.

Audrey got the biggest mannequin Santa could find. (Well, within Santa's "not spending $500 on a mannequin" price range.)

 Santa left all 4 of tickets to see a movie, Frozen, that afternoon.

We ate a lot of popcorn and had a lot of fun. Merry Christmas!

 

How to make little girls cry...

I have an idea, Robertsdale. Let's put out a big Santa mailbox in the middle of a big park. Then, let's come out and take it down a week before Christmas so that kids can search and search in vain for Santa's mailbox and then break down in tears because Santa "will never get our letters."

Great.

I appreciate it.

Thankssomuch;thisdidn'tcauseheartacheformyfamilyatall!

 

Fortunately, this momma remembered that the post office had a special spot inside to mail Santa letters, so we tried there. Thank goodness this was sufficient to the girls. It might not go "directly to Santa like the one in the park", but the post office should be able to get the letters to the North Pole before too long.

Crisis averted.

Later that week, we did head back to the park to play around the Christmas decorations they so graciously left out until after Christmas. 

Yes, they're wearing shorts. Yes, it's December 20th. Yes, I do realize that one of these days we'll live in a place where flip flops and shorts aren't likely to be seen in our Christmas pictures.

 

And, just in case you were wondering... Yes, the post office did manage to deliver their Santa letters in time.