Manure

This is an enticing title isn't it?  I'm sure you're all just dying to know what I could possibly have to say about manure.  

Keep reading.

We all have crap in our lives, sometimes literally for those of us with children in diapers, and others have figurative crap.  For example: Fiscal cliffs, health scares, unruly children, loss of loved ones, and in my case, clinical insanity after giving birth.  

First, lets discuss literal manure.  What is it used for?  Fertilizing fields of crops that grow food.  I don't want to get too scientific or gross, but there are all types of different animal manure that is used to provide different nutrients to help plants grow.  And there IS growth!  

Thus, there is all different types of manure (crap) that comes our way.  Oddly enough, if we pair the nastiness with a little bit of sunshine, rain showers, and some TLC, we too WILL grow!  

Fabulous isn't it?  Be grateful for the large amounts of manure in your life that is allowing you to grow and flourish.  

Also I would like to add as an end note, my grandpa was a farmer his whole life and had to deal with manure every day of his life, and he is one of the best people I have ever known!

Marci

To valentine or not to valentine??

I never knew what valentines meant until the past few years! Because of budget cuts in our house due to fiscal cliffs..ha! I wasn't sure how to properly celebrate without roses,expensive dinner and godiva cholcolate.
What I figured out is what matters iss that my family and friends know that they are loved...I learned about doing heart attacks(hearts,treats..), and dollar store goodies. My. Kids look forward to a romantic dinner of noodles and white sauce. They get cards with things I love about them..kev and I celebrate with the closest weekend doing anything together.
Some people are scrooges and call it a hallmark holiday! To them I say shame on you. If you allow it to become such then you have yourself to blame. I see it as a reminder to stop and remember what you lovee about those you love! Like during thanksgiving..its not that I'm not thankful during the rest of the year its just nice to have a time of year where you take the time to remember.
   I loved valentines this year even though we had soccer practice. Each night. Leading up to vday I wrote something I loved about each of my boys and taped them in the kitchen. We ate at pinnacle peak patio with the kids, and we celebrated with a coyotes game one night later. Life is made up of reminders to love and celebrate eachother... birthdays, anniversarys, and holidays. Traditions also count!
Now go love someone for hells sake!

AUDIT...part DEUX!

It has been a few weeks, but wanted to follow up on my audit. I have expressed how stressful this can be, but it wasn't until the day we were set up to start the process that I thought I may purely die of some sort of IRS death by TAXES!
I. Cleaned the house...organized the house, and made cookies. Although I didn't think he'd eat them based on the fact that some people probably try to poison someone from the irs...(haha) . We lucked out though our Auditor was very nice. All business, but very nice.
This was the beginning of a very long few days!

Baby Heartbreaks

My heart is literally breaking right now!  Who knew that completely taking the bottle away from my sweet little angel would cause so many tears and sadness on my part?  We have slowly been taking it away one feeding at a time, and for the past 3 months she was only getting 1 right before bedtime.  

Tonight it was business as usual, except I made sure to give her a big drink of milk before taking her to brush her teeth and put her in the tub.  "It's time for the nakies!!!!"  She runs her little butt to the bathroom and pounds hard on the door because it's the BEST part of her day!  After getting her cleaned and dressed in jammies, she usually gets a bottle from mom or dad while we rock her to sleep.  Tonight, she got her sippy cup of water instead and a binky. I put her in her crib with both to keep her company, and she whimpered at first because she knew something was missing from the process.  I handed her the sippy cup and again, she seriously heaved a heavy sigh of acceptance as she took it from me and laid down.  What a sweetheart.  She was fast asleep within minutes without another peep, and now I'm wide awake and totally torn up about the situation.  

While I still have plenty of things that make her my BABY (i.e. binkies, diapers, uncontrolled slobber, wretched table manners, etc.) this is the first thing to go, and it's taking a lot of will power to go and wake her up to feed her a bottle.  

And now, I will have to heave my own heavy sigh of acceptance, have a drink of water and fall asleep.  But really, I'm going to cry a lot before that.  

Marci

1 week old

HOW TO SURVIVE AN IRS AUDIT

Raise your hand if you've ever been audited by the IRS...well you can't see me, but I arm is in the air. Exactly one year ago a received a letter only equal to a divore decree. I received a letter telling me that we were chosen to be audited by the IRS. More instructions would follow, but I. Was floored surely they had made a mistake?? I also read that this was a full audit and that I would need to gather a list of over 100 items, that an auditor would come to my home and sit there pouring over our personal, and buisness paperwork and to call Mr.Wong to set up our audit. My mind was reeling what do I do now?? 1.Don't panic..seriously! Its scary..no doubt I will explain why. 2.cry 3.call your auditor right away to set a time to meet. Remember don't get mad at them..its their job. Express your concern, and they really are human and should walk you through this. 4.Get a great accountant if you don't have one already. Our accountant is the bomb and actually used to work for the IRS. Call me for his name. 5.get your shizzz together. They will give you a list..do not get more than they are asking for. 6.organize...organize..organize(it makes the auditor happy) 7.cry again this is super overwhelming After I got over the initial shock I got to work and I mean WORK! Day in and day out I thought about taxes/writeoffs/W2's/credits/itemized deductions. Etc..I studied everything I could and learned a lot about my rights and what we can do. Our accountant walked us through a mock audit. This all happened within a few weeks. I have to stress to everyone that this gets CRAZZYYYYYYYYY! This is the first of a few entries. Please leave me questions, or comments and I will answer them. How to survive the AUDIT??? Ill tell you how. "M"

After The Suck

Student loans, car payment, mortgage, a new wardrobe for the growing toddler every season.  I swear she dresses better than I do.  Then, there are those crazy random expenses that you didn't even know existed.  Needless to say, at the end of the day I'm broke.  A lot. So I stress constantly for days wondering how I'm going to afford this and that and where my next Diet Coke is going to come from. So, instead of worrying, I try to have faith like the good book suggests. Then after my exercise of faith, things get much worse. I go back to my faith and put some muscle into it this time, and things get way worse and I start contemplating alternative housing options that don't include water or electricity. And then, you check the mail. An unexpected refund from the mortgage company, a rebate from the cell phone company, and you realize it's the 4th month in a row that the internet company has failed to bill you, and your husband texts you that he is getting a raise and a bonus. After a large sigh of relief, I have finally reached the "after the suck" phase! The best part about hitting rock bottom is that you can only go up! Marci

Remembering...why things suck before they dont

It can be very. Overwhlming at times...what you might ask?? Life!! It seems like everything hits all at once being over billed, sick, exhausted, and braless. Sometimes I will carry on an all day prayer asking the heavens above for minute by minute help..to exhausted to kneel. Driving to the grocery store or sitting in the shower I pray for guidance.."is that weird"? Should I be more formal? Anyways it hits me that there is never a good or bad time to pray...or to just vent in frusteration. I even sold a table to a woman who prays about everything she buys before she buys it...she prayed about this table for 3 solid monthes before comitting to buying it.(I will spill the whole crazy table lady story at a later date), but I found myself praying for "table lady" to find the answers to her prayers. She even told me to pray for the table which I did!! I did however find odd peace when I was praying for her...to me I could see the whole picture, but she needed peace. So that's what I prayed for her to find. Much like my daily exhausted prayer...our heavenly father sees the whole picture, but he knows we need peace about even little things so he helps us. So never underestimate prayer...for anything, or anyone including "table lady" **Marisa

Sunday Treats

My father-in-law wanted to show his support of our blog by learning to use the oven!  He made us some delicious homemade red velvet oreo cookies.  So nice to know we have family behind everything we do, even if it makes us chubby!

Marci

Counterproductive

I love having a clean house and my daughter loves to think she is helping me.  While I'm folding laundry, she's putting underwear over her head and walking blindly into walls.  While I'm loading the dishwasher she will swipe a spoon from the utensil basket and wave it around like she's Harry Potter in the midst of a wizards duel.  And then when I think I finally have everything in the proper place, I see that there is a tennis racket I didn't know I had on the kitchen floor, and an old VHS in my sock drawer.  I truly love my happy little mess-maker!

Marci

Happiness in a baking cup!

Why do i have my greatest ideas at 1 am??

Seems like I can't sleep....as long as I can remember I can't sleep...so EVER! Except that I didn't know that wasn't normal until I got divorced. You see up until that point at the ripe old age of 24 I thought it was called a night owl. Awake at night big Jerk in the mornings. Well one day I got a kidney infection, and the Doctor game codine. That first night I slept the whole night through. I woke up and thought "whomever invented a whole nights sleep was genious", but then it hit me. Had people been sleeping the whole night through all along?? Was this just a "ME" thing? Was it normal to be tired pretty much all the time?
The answer is "NO" its not normal, but even worse is it runs in my family like heart disease, and ugliness. Sleeplessness had been passed down from generation to generation, and not one person thought I should know about it. So ever since "said codine induced sleep" I have had to take some sort of sleep aid, and something to chill my brain tornado ever since. I haave tried everything in the books..blue light, white noise, writing down concerns, reading...blah blah! Mostly those things make me made, some have helped. The only positive thing I have received is the ability to brainstorm and be creative...also I'm freaking hilarious.
So last night as I lay in bed checking craigslist at 1 am...I decided something...its creative and I think others will like it. I can't reveal it quite yet as I need to talk to my bidness partner, but keep reading this blog. I will reveal it soon!

"M"

Thats right have you seen me??

I am a technological GENIOS!!

Follow Through

As one who has frequented the office of many a therapist, I have yet to discover why I seem to sabotage myself at following through on things I start.  I'm sure I had intentions to ask about it but never got around to it.  Curious.

I have a history of starting books and then not finishing them.  I'll get to the last 5 pages sometimes and I just don't really care how the story ends.  Maybe they were all dumb books and I'm not to only one to give up on them, but I'm pretty sure I just need to wake Freud from the dead and have a long talk with him.  

My husband still gets on my case about an afghan I started to croquet years ago and then didn't even make it big enough to keep a squirrel warm.  Maybe a dwarf hamster though?

Regardless, I know I'm not the only one who gives up on projects I start.  What may seem like a good idea at the time somehow becomes low on the priority list along with dusting the baseboards on the wall.  (I should really do that one day soon.)

When we started this blog, we knew we couldn't just start it and then leave it to rot.  We had to follow through with our plan.  Posting a blog every few days while running a household seems daunting, but it's a labor of love.  Everything we post will come right from the old pumper, in hopes that someone seeking a little comfort will find it here.  Each of us has suffered, and each of us has searched for answers to prayers and found them in unlikely places.  Maybe this will be one persons unlikely place.

With love,

Marci

Its all in the icing..today my sis inlaw and i talked about our January slump..so we both said that we would write 1 sentence that we could blog

Life is all about the icing...the part on top? Or atleast that's how the saying goes? What I'm learning about life is so complex that the icing ontop can't even begin to cover it. There are ingredients to life, some are predictable, ie:flour(breathing), and then there are things that you would never imagine ie:coffee beans (unexpected accents) it accentuates the taste of chocolate(just sayin). A human can't live without breathing its a fact, but the unexpected accents like job loss, a baby, taxes, joy, and passion. In my short 34 year on this planet I have drawn on so many resources to get me through life that I have invariably filled my mind with a host of random facts, and opinions. I have decided along lifes path to make my own recipe...with the icing ontop! This blog will be filled with answers and questions. Focused on LIFE..and everything else. I want to know in 1 sentence what is your red velvet Wednesday..? Voltaire cited "Those who do not learn from the past are condemed to repeat it" hence my love for baked goods, and lack of exercise. "M"

Red Velvet Wednesday

What is the recipe for a happy life?  For me, it's family, friends, wonderful neighbors, and the occasional frequent baked good.  So when my husband's job announced they were sending us to live on the other side of the country for 3 months, it looked as though my life's recipe had been scribbled on with a black magic marker by my toddler.  For 3 months I would be without my family, friends, and neighbors.  No Sunday dinners, no play dates, no random knocks at my door to find an abandoned plate of cookies.  How would I survive?

We packed up and shipped ourselves to downtown Chicago where I seemed to be the only one pushing a stroller through the streets filled with businessmen and women.  While they wore slacks, high heels, and ties, they managed to sprint to their next meeting and talk on their cell phones, while somehow drowning out the deafening screeches of the elevated train. 

Everything was so fast-paced and overwhelming, and I felt as though I was totally alone.  My husband worked close to 12-hour days, so it was just me and my 9-month old baby girl, taking on Chicago 1 day at a time, missing home like crazy, counting the days I would be able to see a familiar face again.  

Luckily, the Lord knew to send me somewhere that contained at least 1 key ingredient to my recipe for happiness.  About 2 miles away from our corporate housing was my little piece of heaven, Sprinkles Cupcakes.  Because we didn't have a car in the city, every Wednesday I would trek 2 miles pushing a stroller to Sprinkles, and 2 miles back to the apartment in the heavy humidity.  I was a sweaty, unattractive mess when it was over, but my prize was a single red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting.  One bite would mean I was 1 more week closer to going home.  Another bite told me that the Lord provides us with little ways to cheer ourselves up.  My final bite allowed me to have something to always look forward for the next Wednesday.  

We are finished with our Chicago adventure now, and coming home gives me back all my ingredients.  Life still has it's challenges and sometimes they feel too difficult to take on.  That's why it's so important to have other versions of Red Velvet Wednesdays.  Something to look forward to and trying to find the good that the Lord puts in my life.  A reason to celebrate surviving another week of trials.

Marci