Discontentment

Now that the kids are a little older I have come to accept that my routines are changing (if you can call 8, 7 and 4 years old, "older") . In case I have mentioned it before, I am a compulsive list maker and love my routines. My husband, on the other hand, could care less about schedules and routines. Even though he has to be to work at 8:00 am do you think he gets up about the same time everyday? Nope. Does he take a shower about the same time every day? Nope. Does he eat breakfast regularly? Nope.

So, each morning, I get up about the same time: 5:30 (this is so I can have some "mommy-time" before everyone else gets up). I go about MY routine while I watch my husband have his routine, which is not routine at all and changes from day to day! Some days he will get up, grab a bite to eat, then take a shower. Another day he may sleep later, jump up and into the shower immediately and skip breakfast. I tend to do things in basically the same order, get up, make coffee, have mommy-time, make lunches, unload dishwasher, make breakfast, clean up kitchen, then shower and get ready for work.

When the kids were younger and not in school, even though I still worked full time outside the home, our routine was different. A friend of ours watched the kids in her home from the time Spirit was about 9 months all the way until Lady Bug was about 6 months old. (The friend decided she wanted to purchase a home which would have been about an hour and a half drive the opposite direction of my work so we had to part ways) Then we went to another home daycare briefly before a friend of ours asked if she could watch the kids at our house. My point of sharing this is that the routines were just different, simpler in a way. Now it is hustle bustle all the time.

Now that the boys are in school and Lady Bug is in preschool the routines are as different as they ever have been. Last year Spirit only had to turn in the weekly homework once a week (Friday), this year it gets turned in daily. Last year Lefty had very little homework, this year it is nightly and gets turned in once a week. Lady Bug even has homework (yes, people they give it to 'em in preschool now!) but she only gets it once a week and has all week to complete it. Mr. Man has been busier this school year so far and basically he is up and out the door before the kiddos are up and about, which means I am on my own for getting everyone ready and getting everyone to school on time.

However, at the start of each new school year, I find myself discontent in areas of my life. This year I am discontent with my bedroom furniture, discontent with my bathroom walls, discontent with my living room walls and then discontent with what has become of my "mommy-time".

So, I recently found some cute pictures for my bathroom wall....just need to hang them up. I also found a good journal that I plan to use during my mommy-time. My bedroom and living room remain a source for discontentment.

I also need to say here, I do this at the start of every school year...get discontent, make all kinds of plans to fix or update things and nothing comes of it. I tend to get over the discontentment when the hustle and bustle of Christmas takes over!! **(Not to ruin your day but there is only 116 days until Christmas....eeek!)**

School morning breakfast taco bar

I have posted this recipe before, but since the last time I posted this I have made one slight addition to the recipe so I decided to re-post this. I recently started adding in a few cubed potato hashbrowns in the taco.

This is a great school morning breakfast, it can be made ahead and set up as a "taco bar" with all the fixins out so as people get up and are ready to eat they make their own taco.

Breakfast Tacos are similar to a breakfast burrito only smaller.

Breakfast Tacos
INGREDIENTS:
4 eggs
1/4 cup sour cream, plus a little extra to top off the tacos
4 small (8"-fajita size) flour tortillas
1/2 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
4 strips bacon
1/2 bag of cubed hashbrown potatoes
mild picante sauce

Fry bacon in a skillet and remove only bacon to paper towel to drain, then crumble and set aside.

Using the bacon grease cook hashbrowns until done. Set aside and cover to keep warm.

Beat eggs together in a small bowl. Add sour cream and salt and pepper to taste. Pour egg mixture into skillet and cook for a few minutes, then stir with a spatula and cook more until well cooked.

When ready to serve, place scrambled eggs in the middle of the tortilla. Add a few hashbrowns down middle. Top with crumbled bacon, cheese, sour cream, and picante sauce. Fold over and seal with a little sour cream.

**NOTE: Be sure to only add a few potatoes and a little bit of egg, otherwise you won't be able to close up the tortilla if it is stuffed too full!**

4,300 mile road trip. 10 days. 5 people. 1 car.

Some things I learned when taking a 4,300 mile road trip with an 8 year old boy, a 7 year old boy and a 4 year old girl...

1. Never underestimate the importance of a potty stop

2. Never allow 8 yo boy to purchase a sling shot in Mt. Airy, NC and then coop him up in a car because inevitably there will be coco puffs shot from said sling shot aimed at sister or brother or even mom's head!

3. Never underestimate the importance of a good hotel bed.

4. Don't think you are doing a good thing allowing kids to run and burn energy, getting hot so they drink tons of water and then throw them in a car....you WILL have potty stops every 20 minutes. Guaranteed!

5. Portable DVD players are heaven sent!

6. Two girls definitely take longer to make a potty stop than three boys do!

7. Rest areas and McDonalds make great places for potty breaks, they tend to be more on the cleaner side than a gas station.

8. Snacks in the car are life savers for kids who are bored, but skittles that get spilled and then water dumped on them are extremely messy to clean up!

9. Advil is a necessity when being cooped up in a car with 3 kids who don't want the others touching them!

10. I love my family very much and enjoy vacationing with them, but was glad to be back home too!

Take a tour of my house - Spirit's room

This room is actually on the lower level but somehow in my haste to pre-post the last "home tour" pictures I somehow posted Lefty's room last week which is upstairs, instead of posting this one. Since I was on vacation, I didn't realize I had done that until yesterday...whoops!

So today we are back to the lower level to showcase Spirit's room.
When we moved into the home, I was not ready for any of the children to be on a different level than me. So we ended up making this room the playroom for almost a year. Then the boys just had way too different of personalities and they weren't able to share the upstairs bedroom anymore. Lefty is a very clean, organized kid, where Spirit is well, he is spirited and doesn't mind dirt and clutter. We were finding that Lefty would go in and do a thorough cleaning of their room and get really upset when Spirit didn't keep it clean. We finally decided it was time to separate them. Then we had to decide which boy would be moved downstairs. We ended up moving Spirit down there since he is the oldest.

This bedroom is on the lower level next to the laundry room/bathroom.

There is one whole wall that is a large closet with lots of built-in shelves that I just LOVE! The previous owners also built an L-shaped desk in there (which isn't my favorite thing and I would love to tear it out one day, but Spirit likes it!)

I will being showing you pictures of when it was a playroom and then what it looks like now as Spirit's room.


PLAYROOM:
The large TV in there isn't connected to cable, nor does it have it antenna so they can only watch movies (from the VCR/DVD player) or play video games on it.

Spirit is my book loving, video game loving, outdoor loving kid. He loves to lay in bed and read, but also takes every opportunity to be outdoors, riding his bike, roller blading or collecting bugs.

SPIRIT's ROOM:
We ended up leaving some of the toys in here. I took out all of Lady Bug's kitchen stuff and moved it to her room and most of Lefty's toys were taken to his room also. The Playstation is still in here and Spirit plays with it often and allows the other two to play whenever they want.


You can see in the above picture the wall of closet, they have mirrored doors (not my favorite!)

I absolutely hate the wall paneling too and that is on my list of things to remove and paint too!

This room is in need of some "character", and slowly we are adding stuff to make it more HIS room.

In case you missed some of the previous rooms I showcased in my home tour:
Living Room
Kitchen
Sunroom
Family Room
Laundry room / bathroom

Back to reality

Sometimes it is a good thing to get back to a routine, sometimes it is terribly hard to do!

We rolled back into town about 10:00 pm on Saturday night and just went straight to our own beds....ahhhhhhhhh. I love my own bed!

Yesterday we cleaned out the car, did loads and loads and loads of laundry and tried to adjust back to life without vacation!

Today the kids started back to school! Everyone had new clothes on and backpacks loaded up with school supplies. Funny how when school let out I thought the end of summer would never come, but then BOOM! here it is! The kids had a great summer and they were able to do some really cool stuff, I feel good about the summer!

I guess I better get to work....

Take a tour of my house - Lefty's room

I am starting this part of the tour with the stairs leading up to the master bedroom and also Lefty's and Lady Bug's rooms. I just love this hallway so I had to showcase it to you but didn't think it needed it's very own post!

So here is a picture taken from the stairs looking towards the end of the hallway


Now we will move to Lefty's room. He is my train loving, book loving, puzzle loving kid. Although he loves to be outside, he loves his train sets equally as much. He will lay in bed at night or write in his journal.

I've told you before he is a very clean and organized child, but these pictures were taken after we had company and the room was not as clean as it could be, but I needed to take pictures and didn't have time to wait for it to be clean!

This is taken from the doorway

This is taken from the bed looking at the closet

This one is taken from the closet looking at the bed

I'm leavin' on a jet plane...

I just don't know what time...

Apparently there are only two flights from here to Nashville on the weekends on this particular airline and my original ticket is for the later of the two. I am heading to the airport this afternoon in an attempt to get on the earlier flight which gets me to Nashville four hours earlier. IF I don't get on that flight, then I still have my ticket which leaves at 7:00 pm.

In case you missed the drama, click here to read last nights post.