Owen in Action

Owen looking cool on the soccer field and cooling down at the splash park. He likes to drink the water too! The funny thing is that almost every time he'd go to take a drink the water would turn off!

Love Being a Mom!

So I was recently asked to write about why I chose to stay home from work and be a mom. This is a decision that didn't just happen overnight. Because even someone who has the chance to be a stay at home mom will put other things in the way if that desire is not there. I wanted to be the kind of person who is busy, accomplishing and always finding ways to grow and progress personally. Of course I thought that meant not staying at home and being just a mom cause everybody knows that stay at home mom's do nothing. haha. Anyway little by little I gained my conviction and desire to come home and be there raising the little love of my life. I guess you could say there were some influential people who impressed me a long the way. Not because of what they told me but because of what I saw. While working at a couple of preschools I whittnessed a lot of tears and heartache. It was always sad to see little 12-18 month old kids be dropped off in the morning around 6 or 7:00 and then picked up that night around 5-6:00. And the parents had no influence whatsoever in the teaching, raising, loving or nurturing of their child for a near 12 hours that day. And that's not just a one day thing. For most it is a 5 days a week thing!

Well so I guess you could say that working there had a lot to do with it too. I was one of the lucky ones who could have my son with me through the day. But it is still so different than being in a loving home environment with your child. I was missing the morning hugs and breakfast together because I was rushing to get us ready and in the car. I was missing cuddling and rocking because Owen would usually fall asleep for the night on the way home from work. And a lot was lacking in my role as a wife too. I didn't have the energy to give Brad the love and support he needed. I was too tired to make dinner and most of the time cleaning up was very random to completely non-existent.

Since I made my decision and came home I have felt so much peace. I'm able to send my husband off with a mountain of love and support every day and be the teacher and nurturer my little boy needs me to be. I feel like I have made good friends so Owen can still get his play time and I have learned to continue to use my talents in other ways. I learned to play the piano when I was young so now I am able to use that ability to teach. That takes up maybe a few hours a week and that is something I am able to do from home to bring in a little extra income.

I think for any mom who is debating whether or not to stay at home because of this or that. I say do it now. This is when they need us the most and want to give us their love. A friend told me that all the girls in her family accept her were working while being moms. And they were all jealous of her and were telling her that she was so lucky she didn't have to do anything and she could just stay home. But then when they got to talking about it, they liked having the extra money and the nice things. They didn't want to give up shopping and having the extra money to buy their favorite brand-named jeans or whatever. When I heard this, I got to thinking that the longer you stay working, the less likely you probably are to ever come home cause it would be so easy to get used to the double incomes. And then life and problems would grow based on that. So I realized it doesn't always come without sacrifices to be a stay at home mom, but it's so worth it that it doesn't seem like a sacrifice at all.


Cool Dude on the Potty

Owen and I have had a ton of fun practicing the potty thing! He is doing really well and looks so cute in his little underwear! As long as their is sometime to entertain him for a minute or two, he has no problem using the potty!

Here's to Three Years!

So we had a blast on our anniversary. It started out with dinner at a new restaurant for us. It was called the Chocolate Bar. Very good and fun. Lots of fondue type of stuff. We went bowling after that. We played like 4 games in a row and tied exactly at 510 total. Ouch! Anyway after that we were so thirsty so we stopped to get a drink at AMPM and I totaly spilled the Icee I got all over the store counter and floor and in the meantime Brad couldn't remember his pin for his debit card so as I'm cleaning up everything he heads out to the car to get my purse. And the the lady comes over to me and she laughing and trying not to make fun of me and says here take your drink and get a new icee and go. Don't worry about anything. I said cool, thanks and headed out to the car. I no sooner get in the car before we even take off and oops! there I go again! Totaly spilling my icee for the 2nd time. But I was too embarrased to go in again and ask for napkins so I licked up my mess. But not the stuff on the floor. What a crazy night! After that we headed up to a pretty hill over looking the city and talked about whatever came to our heads. It was a fun night and has been a really fun three years together!

The Simple Things in Life

Ready . . . . Set . . . .GO!!!!

Owen's absolute favorite thing in the word is going up then down things! There is a park at the end of our street about 2 minutes walking distance. So when we get brave enough to go out and get all hot and sweaty, he is the happiest kid on earth. :) He is also our little boogie boy. He can dance like no other. We've gotten him on video but I'm still learning how to post stuff on here so when I learn how I'll post him getting his groove on!

Look at this silly face!!

Fun in Jarbidge

We spent the fourth of July in a tiny old mining town called Jarbidge, Nevada. Tirza's Mom and Dad have a cabin, guest house and garage/shed there and it was the first time we'd been there together. It's a cool old mining town with tons of history there. There are so many places to off road and luckily we were able to go pretty much anywhere we wanted thanks to Tirza's dad's quads and the Razr. It feels like a little piece of heaven when you're up in the mountains.

They had activities all weekend in the little town. There were a lot of people there now since it's summer, but come winter there is a population of about 5-10 people that stay there year round.

Owen disovered the slide at the park and wanted to go round and round for the rest of his life. "Up the ladder, then down the slide", over and over and over again!

There were some really cool old mining shafts and old buildings pretty much everywhere you go up there.

The wildflowers are everywhere up on the mountains. And tons of colors, blue, yellow, red, orange. They had these flowers that were just crazy fire red!