14) & {p,h,f,r} vol. 87 & “Answer Me This” Mash-up: Road Trips, Disneyland & Star Wars

By bobbi
May 3, 2014
3 Comments

~ 0 ~

Hey, guys. I hope everyone is well. I took a long blogging break while we were out of town but I’m itching to get back online. I’ve spent the last couple of days catching up on FB and blogs, even though I still have 300+ unread posts in my reader. I was just going to delete everything in my Bloglovin feed and start over but then I wouldn’t have found out things like Micaela is pregnant (congrats!), my sis redesigned her blog and has a great post on motherhood (BTW, sis, am I exempt from the contest since we are related??) and Jen’s new book is out and there are TONS of cool contests to go with it. Like this one…

How easy it that? My sis is sending me an extra copy she had so I am paying it forward and purchasing the book for a friend, as well as a kindle version for myself when I’m on the go. Still not convinced to buy your own? Check out this promo video. You’ll see many of our fave authors and bloggers. My personal favorite excerpts are from Dwija (she also gets my vote for best selfie with the book), second is Bonnie and her Frozen rendition (she also has a great vlog review) and third is Hallie, just cuz I love her smile. 🙂

Anyway, to make up for lost time I am going to milk this post and link up with three awesome blogs – Jen for 7 Quick Takes, Like Mother Like Daughter for {pretty, happy, funny, real} (Refer to QT #2-5) and Kendra for Answer Me This (Refer to QT #7). Here we go…

~ 1 ~

As you may remember, in my last Online Daybook I shared about my frustration with Brian’s cancer and how hard it was to watch him deal with his chemo treatments. He was off chemo this week and I can’t tell you how happy it made me to see him back to his old self. I am relishing these days before he starts his next round of chemo on Monday. I just have to learn to cope and adjust accordingly.

I was thinking about a comment made by Angela, who is also fighting and going through cancer. She said:

Bobbi! You know you and Brian have my prayers! Chemo is rough. Cancer stinks. It exhausts the living daylights out of the recipient AND their families. However..it doesn’t last forever. We can do ANYTHING for a period in our lives, because God equips us daily for the task at hand, and all we have to do is be thankful for the gift of the day…

I love that last line because we can apply it to anything in any season of our life – whether we are sleep deprived moms with little ones or seasoned moms worrying about older kids or single women dealing with other issues.

We can do ANYTHING for a period in our lives, because God equips us daily for the task at hand, and all we have to do is be thankful for the gift of the day.

So we were thankful for the week of no chemo treatments and took advantage by planning a trip to So Cal to visit with my family.

~ 2, 3, 4 & 5 ~

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

We slept in and didn’t leave the house until 5:45 AM but we are excited and ready to go.

On Highway 101.

Okay, 5:45 AM may not seem like sleeping in but ideally, we get up at 3 AM and are on the road by 4 AM so we can knock out the first half of the trip while the kids are sleeping. Sleeping in was great but when the kids were up and asking, “Are we there yet?” at 6 AM you start to wish you got up at 3. At least the drive was pretty. I LOVE when I see the green hills on one side of the road and the gorgeous Pacific Ocean on the other side of the road. It makes up for other Cali craziness. 😉

I really needed this trip! I needed to get a hug from my mom and my dad. I needed to laugh with my siblings. I needed to see my husband smile again and just relax. We had a going away/early bday party for my brother-in-law Mick who will soon be deployed to Afghanistan. The next day we all headed further south to spend the day with my brother Rob, my sis-in-law Maria and their two sweet little boys Max and Philip.

Laughing with my brother Rob. Poor Andrew is thinking, “Never mind the chatting, mom. Please feed me.” (Photo courtesy of my sis-in-law Maria. Hope you didn’t mind me posting it, Maria! ;-))

My boys had so much fun playing basketball in their backyard. They had never played before and Brian was trying to teach them how to shoot a basket.

Andrew really started to let lose and got the hang of the game. I think he may have found a new favorite sport.

Matthew was ready to use his super powers to make a basket.

Bella enjoyed her time with my sister Jacinta. We laugh because Bella looks just like Jacinta as a girl. She’s her mini-me. (And to this day I will still sometimes call Bella by the name Jacinta.)

Later that night we headed to Disneyland for a couple of days. Little did we know that Cali was going to have a heat wave.

We took this photo at 5 PM when it was still 93 degrees out. (93!)

But we still managed to have fun…

…and keep a smile on our faces.

Well, except for John-Paul. Matthew loves walking but JP does not like heat, noise or too many people. So Disneyland had him in conflicted emotions. But the HIGHLIGHT of Disneyland was their favorite show – The Jedi Training.

At the previous shows we’ve seen, Darth Vader and the Storm Troopers were the only villains to be fought but this time they included Darth Maul as well. I’ve got to admit I was geeking out with the whole thing. 😉

All in all, the trip was a lot of fun. Of course, we had the usual moments when the kids were cranky or running wild in the hotel room and I got frustrated and told Brian that we will never again take a trip like this! But like labor, you soon forget all the pain and only remember all the joy and before you know it, you are planning to do it all over again. 😉

Seriously, this last photo shows that it all worth it…having fun together and the kids spending special time with Brian was awesome.

~ 6 ~

May the 4th

Source

Speaking of Star Wars, don’t forget that tomorrow/today is May the 4th, Star Wars Day! (As in May the 4th be with you… I had to explain it to Brian. He didn’t get it. LOL.)

You’ll find lots of Star Wars themed items out there but I found this one to be particularly interesting. It is a Jedi Work Out. If you can’t get to the Downsize Fitness in Dallas to participate, no worries. There is also a home version you can do. So grab your light saber and get to working out with Light Saber Leaps and Help Me Obiwan Kenobi Squats. Love it. 🙂

~ 7 ~

For my last take, I’ll do a quick Answer Me This.

1. Are you becoming your mother?

Haha! Yeah, there are a lot of little things that I act like my mom. When we were at my parent’s house last weekend my mom was explaining something to my dad (in minute detail) and Brian started laughing saying, “That sounds just like you.” When I act silly or funny with the kids they laugh and giggle and it reminds me of my mom’s playful sense of humor. I’ll find that I have many of the same little house rules like you are NEVER to leave a toilet paper roll empty or if you open the last (fill-in-the-blank) from the pantry, you MUST write it down on the shopping list. I remember as a kid how I used to cringe when I went shopping with my mom because there would always be a situation when she’d complain (granted, politely) because something didn’t ring up on sale or she was overcharged or some such thing. I thought I’d die of embarrassment. Now that I am a mom, I’ve inherited the “i-don’t-care-what-people-think” gene and have no problem correcting a shopping injustice, to the embarrassment of my own daughter. heehee

There are also moments when a negative aspect of my mom’s child rearing come out in me but thankfully, I usually detect it in time to stop myself or else apologize for it after the fact. That is one thing I treasure from my mom. She came from a difficult childhood and had a lot of issues to deal with as she parented her own children. She may have made mistakes but by the grace of God she broke the cycle of dysfunction and brought faith and a strong love of God into our family. She is the strongest person I know and my parents are proof that whatever problems you had in the past, they do not have to control your future. God can make you (and your family) new.

2. Coffee or tea?

I’m embarrassed to say, neither. I hate the taste of both. My coffee cup holds cold water.

3. What foreign country would you like to visit?

I’d love to go back to Rome (Brian and I went for our first anniversary in Jan 2000). I’d also love to visit where my in-laws grew up – Austria (my mom-in-law) and Slovania (my dad-in-law).

4. Do you cry easily?

Yes. I’m a sap…unless I’m mad. Then I refuse to cry.

5. How often do you wear heels?

Um, never. I do not believe in torture.

6. Do you play an instrument?

I play a mean Playskool xylophone, baby.

Have a great Sunday!! 🙂

PS – You can follow RoL on Bloglovin, Feedly or another news feed. If you are a social media fan like me, we can stay in touch through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, GoodReads, Letterboxd or Instagram. 😉

Restore Workshop – Lessons Learned (Vol 2): Remember Gratitude

By bobbi
April 4, 2014
2 Comments

NOTE: It is not too late to sign up for the Restore Workshop. I believe it is open until this Saturday 4/12/14. You do not need to follow the workshop’s timeline. I am about a week behind the schedule. Some elements I like to take a little more time to work on and some days I simply run out of hours in the day. You can read my other post about the workshop here – Restore Workshop – Lessons Learned (Vol 1): Melt Downs & Being at Peace

* * *

I am linking this post’s photos with Cari’s Theme Thursday: Remember. (Well, I was going to, but as of right now, there is no link-up. Maybe I missed something…)

I am linking up this post with the ladies over at Like Mother, Like Daughter for {pretty, happy, funny, real}, although it is a little out of order. 🙂

{real}

There are many lessons we are learning in the Restore Workshop and one of them is gratitude. I know it is sometimes easy for me to get bogged down with the “what is going wrong right now” and not pay attention to “everything that is going right.”

Part of our goal is to end our day in prayer and reflect on being thankful. Elizabeth asked us to write down five things we were thankful for at the end of each day. I had a small blank journal I got on clearance at Staples gathering dust on my book shelf so I thought it would be perfect to use as a gratitude journal. I added a quote from Mother Teresa on the front cover. It says:

“The best way to show my gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems with joy.”

I’ve got a looooong way to go until I can accept everything with joy but writing down five things seemed easy enough. I have to admit, it is not always easy to come up with five things every night. Sometimes I really have to ponder, particularly on days when it was just me, the kids, and housework. I had to look at the little things that brought a smile to my face whether it was a moment of humor or a phone call from my mom or a new recipe I tried that actually tasted good but I have been keeping track. Elizabeth said we could write it down or take photos, whatever works for us. Sometimes I add photos to my journal that highlight something I’m thankful for.

Other times, I don’t have five sweet things to ponder since I am just happy to have made it through the day…

…like Wednesday when all I could write was “#1-5 I am thankful I survived this freaking day! ” Baby steps. 😉

So with thanksgiving on my mind, here are some moments of gratitude from this week.

{pretty}

I took this photo today after the rain stopped. You can still see a few droplets on the petals. It’s easy to be grateful for God’s gorgeous creation.

I snapped this sunset with my phone the other day. After a long day I am extremely grateful when 7:30 PM arrives because it means the kids are in bed (despite their protests that it is still light outside) and I can enjoy a little respite with Brian. (I love my babies but I need some uninterrupted hubby time too. ;-))

{happy}

When I am cooking in the kitchen I usually chase the wild boys out but this time I was grateful for their laughter and humorous antics. So I hugged them and laughed with them and snapped their photo. (Although, afterwards I did send them outside so I could finish cooking. ;-))

After two days of rain we were all grateful to get back outside in the sun. (I don’t know how people with real winters stand months and months of cold weather!) I was going to set up a shot but Andrew was determined to photobomb it while riding by on his scooter.

That face. How can so much cuteness cause me so much trouble. 😉 I’m grateful for a camera that allows me to record these precious moments that fly by way too fast!

My lovable boys are always eager to pose for the camera but Bella, not so much. I was grateful that she agreed to let me snap a picture of her. I love my sweet girl.

{funny}

For some reason Matthew loves going to the doctor and he gets upset when he can’t go with Brian to the cancer center. So instead he walks around the house singing “Time for a Check-up” but he was upset that his stethoscope kept falling down so he asked me to tape them to his ears. 😉 LOL.

Have a great weekend!

Theme Thursday: Answer & {pretty, happy, funny, real} vol. 85: Beautiful Hikes, Happy Days & Superheroes

By bobbi
March 14, 2014
6 Comments

I’m a day late but I am linking up with Cari for Theme Thursday: Answer (scroll down to the very last photo for that one) and Like Mother, Like Daughter for {pretty, happy, funny, real}.

{pretty}

In an earlier post I shared that during Lent I wanted to regain my happiness in daily mommy life. One of the ways to work on that was to get outside more and spend time with the family doing fun things. We started it off with a hike at Point Lobos. We haven’t been there since last summer so we were due for a visit.

If you visit the Monterey Peninsula, you simply must come visit it here. It is breathtaking. We like to park in the picnic area parking lot and then follow the trail to our favorite scenic spot…

…which you can see once you get to the top of this hill. You can see the tiny people at the very top. (I took the previous photo at the top of that hill.)

We spotted some lounging harbor seals on the way up.

Then once you get to the top, you keep going a bit until you reach the other side of the hill and you look down at this. The colors are gorgeous. One day we will then hike down to the sandy beach below but there isn’t a designated trail that way so it is a bit hard with all the kids.

The hike would seem a lot harder but it was easy enough for all the kids (and this out of shape mama) to handle. If you continue along the trail you can go to the another section of forest.

{happy}

“Because I’m happy…Clap along if you know what happiness is to you…”

How can I not be happy looking at these smiling faces. 🙂

{funny}

I think the kids’ favorite moment was spotting this little guy. 😉

{real}

Matthew has been on a superhero kick, wearing his Thor cape and Spiderman shirt for days. (I have to secretly wash them while he sleeps.)

Shopping with his mama.

Scoring a free banana and kids cliff bar snack at Whole Foods from a child friendly cashier. (I was a little shocked. It’s usually the pooches that get the royal treatment around here.) 😉

And finally….

I’m linking up this photo with Theme Thursday: Answer

The answer to where a superhero gets his real power…humbling himself before the Lord. 😉

Thanks to Cari and LMLD for hosting! 🙂

{pretty, happy, funny, real} vol. 84 & Theme Thursday: Dirt

By bobbi
March 6, 2014
8 Comments

I didn’t quite finish my second Lent post so for the time being I’m doing a quick photo mash-up as I link up with Cari for Theme Thursday: Dirt (refer to {pretty}) and Like Mother, Like Daughter for {pretty, happy, funny, real}. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably already seen most of these but for family not on Instagram, these are more for you. 😉

{pretty}

I’m linking this photo with Theme Thursday: Dirt.

Bella has been working on a science project this week and it was perfect for the theme of dirt.

New buds are starting to sprout through the dirt.

A week later, she had this.

There are signs of spring everywhere. The trees are growing leaves and flowers are beginning to bloom.

Including these on a neighbor’s tree. So pretty.

{happy}

I was happy to be able to go to Mass yesterday with my sweeties.

{funny}

It was funny to see this thing on the road the other day. Bella and I were a little freaked that it was going to tip over. The girls chatting in there didn’t seem too concerned.

I was at Whole Foods and saw this escargot for sale. (I tried not to gag.) When I came home I had to watch the I Love Lucy episode where Lucy has lunch in a French cafe. 😉

{real}

I’m participating in the Holy Lensphoto challenge from Surviving Our Blessings.com. Every day from Ash Wednesday up to Easter Sunday, they provide a prompt based on the daily lectionary scripture readings.

Yesterday’s topic was “fast.” (And I’m really tempted to saty up until midnight so I can eat that peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’ve been craving all day!) 😉

Happy Thursday. 🙂

Theme Thursday: Hearts & {pretty, happy, funny, real} vol. 82: Struggles, Puddle Jumping & Cheeseheads

By bobbi
February 13, 2014
12 Comments

It’s a photo mash-up as I link up with Cari for Theme Thursday: Hearts and Like Mother, Like Daughter for {pretty, happy, funny, real}.

{pretty}

I’m linking this photo with Theme Thursday: Hearts.

Dealing with Brian’s cancer and surgery-recovery has been a roller coaster ride. Thankfully, Brian is getting better and stronger but he is still not able to do the things he used to do before the surgery – helping with the kids and around the house . (I didn’t realize how much he did until he stopped doing it!) That has made my days busier and more exhausting. Not to mention the emotional toll of knowing that the !@#$ cancer is still inside his body and he will have to go through chemo to get it out. It’s scary.

A couple weeks ago, Jessica made a comment about me being positive through all this. I’m trying, but don’t get the wrong idea. I have my moments (many moments) when I am stark raving mad. Motherhood in itself is a sure fire way to test just how selfish you are. Being a mother and a caregiver to an ill loved one has brought out my selfishness in ways that makes me ashamed. I know some will say that I am being too hard on myself but I also know what God is showing me. I know he wants me to rely on him more. To lose myself in his arms and gather my strength from him. But that’s hard to do. It’s easier to keep myself busy…to complain about this or that…to blow up at the kids for driving me crazy because if I don’t…if I stop and “think” about all this, I’ll lose it. I’ll crumble to the floor and cry until I have no fight left in me. I need that fight to survive.

Instead, I allow myself little crying episodes, like right now as I am typing, when all the house is quiet and everyone is sleeping. Then I can let the tears fall without scaring the kids or worrying Brian. When I’m done I take a deep breath, shake it off and blog. (I’ll hold off on that nervous breakdown until we are over and done with all this cancer drama.)

Well, that was a rather long intro to my first photo of a heart. Sorry. I’m ~~doing my best~~ going to try harder to trust in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and let him be my strength, especially when I am feeling weak. I don’t have to give up the fight, I just have to make sure he is the one powering it. (If that makes sense.) 😉

A portion of the icon of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that hangs over our family altar.

***

Okay, now that I’ve had my cry and am feeling better let’s have a few fun photos. 🙂

Remember how I told you that I used my saved up Target gift cards to buy some new bakeware? Well, I put this new heart shaped muffin tin to good use by trying a new recipe for healthier carrot- apple muffins. (I’ll post the recipe at the next Pinterest Party.)

They were not super sweet so I added a little drizzle of honey on the plate. The kids actually gobbled them up! (Even my picky eater.)

{happy}

Despite the difficulties, I am so, so, so happy to have Brian home and in my life each day. I was also happy to enjoy the beard he was growing. I loved the rugged look it gave him, although he was not happy with the gray it showed. LOL. He decided he wanted to shave so I took one last photo of us together with it.

Here is the after photo. I have to admit, he does look younger without it. I told him either way, he still makes me swoon, so it’s all good. 😉

{funny}

We finally got some much needed rain and when it stopped Matthew couldn’t wait to jump in some puddles. It’s the prefect way for a two year old to start his day. 😉

{real}

Brian’s boss and co-workers are awesome people. They sent him a get well card with many lovely sentiments and this little gift…

A Packers cheesehead autographed by Aaron Rodgers! He was golfing this weekend at Pebble Beach for the AT&T ProAm and they pulled a few strings to get this for him. Brian was so excited. I love it. 🙂

Revolution of Love

Do small things with great love.

Tag Archives: pretty-happy-funny-real

7 Quick Takes (5/3/14) & {p,h,f,r} vol. 87 & “Answer Me This” Mash-up: Road Trips, Disneyland & Star Wars

Restore Workshop – Lessons Learned (Vol 2): Remember Gratitude

Theme Thursday: Answer & {pretty, happy, funny, real} vol. 85: Beautiful Hikes, Happy Days & Superheroes

{pretty, happy, funny, real} vol. 84 & Theme Thursday: Dirt

Theme Thursday: Hearts & {pretty, happy, funny, real} vol. 82: Struggles, Puddle Jumping & Cheeseheads