The Big Day

Tomorrow is the big day, Terence has his second interview for the recruiter position he interviewed for last week. I know he is going to do a great job, Terence interviews really well. Thank you to everyone who has been praying for Terence and our family, we have felt your prayers and we are very grateful for them. Please pray that Terence will do a good job in his interview tomorrow.

Good luck T-spoon I know you are going to do awesome! I love you!

Observations from Dancing with the Stars

1. Buzz Aldrin has had a few too many face lifts
2. John Stamos still likes to play with the Beach Boys? I thought those days ended when Full House did.
3. Kate Gosslin could not possibly look more uncomfortable
4. This is the first season I have watched this show
5. I know a lot of LDS people ball room dance. Is wearing a small tight fitting ballroom dancing outfit the same thing as wearing a bathing suit or a leotard?
6. This show has a lot of commercials
7. I really liked the number they did for Haiti, it was pretty impressive
8. I like Brooke Burk better than the raspy voiced lady from the last few seasons
9. It’s fun to watch DWTS with my sister on Facebook and keep a running commentary
10. I’m glad Shannon is going home, she is haggard.

Why...

You should always keep markers out of reach of children...

Thank you Corey for decorating our door. 

Not much to say

I have been avoiding blogging this weekend primarily because I knew if I did I would sound negative. This has been a tough weekend. Friday afternoon I got in trouble at work for something that I did by mistake. I am the kind of person who if I make a mistake I absolutely take accountability for it however in this situation I was accused of saying something that I absolutely did not say. I don’t mind owning up to a mistake but I absolutely will not have someone question my integrity. I am also the kind of person where when something like that happens it will bother me for days. As I sit here writing I have a knot in my stomach just thinking about going to work tomorrow. It’s not a good situation and I just hope it comes to some kind of reasonable resolution.

In addition to being stressed out about work this weekend both of my kids were really sick. Corey has been throwing up since Tuesday evening and Connor started throwing up yesterday. I ended having to take Corey to the emergency room yesterday afternoon because he had been throwing up and running a fever for 5 days and developed a bad cough on top of that. The doctor told me he simply had a viral infection and that it would get better on its own. I knew that but was worried about him getting dehydrated or having something worse so better safe than sorry. Both boys seem to be doing better today but we kept them home from church just to give them a little more time to recover.

Hopefully this week to come is better than last week and this weekend. I’m really tired of being stressed out.

Interview

Terence had an interview today for a recruiter position with a company in Kirkland.  The interview went really well and they have invited him come back next week for a follow up interview and to meet some of the other people on the team.  This job has some awesome potential and Terence is really excited about it.  We don't know what day his interview is going to be but are hoping it is early next week. 
I know I have asked this a lot lately but am going to ask one more time, please keep Terence in your prayers this week.  We will keep you posted on how things go once we find out more.

By the way I'm really proud of Terence!  He works so hard and did such a great job on his interview today.  He is an awesome husband and father and we are lucky to have him.  Oh and I forgot to mention HUGE thank you to my mom for watching our boys today for us.  She moved around her whole schedule at work so she could help out.  We really appreciate it!

Pedicures!

Also on Saturday all the girls (Emily, Olga, Mom, Heather, me) went and got pedicures.  The first place we went to said they could get all of us in but ended up not being able to.  Heather almost got into a fight with a Redmond Mom who came in to her appointment 15 minutes late and got all huffy when the women working were going to make her wait.  We decided to go to another place that I had gone before and they were able to get all of us in pretty quickly.  It was so much fun to have some girl time.

Mom and I taking pictures of each other at the first place

Emily and me

LOL!  Still waiting at the first place

We all tried on a bunch of differnt colors at the first place so this is a picture of all our fingers.  I particularly like Olga's one wonky finger on the far left.  Makes me laugh every time!

Cliche toe picture

Heather stubbed her toe really bad chasing a dog right after we got our pedicures.  This is a picture of her injury

This was such a fun day!  We laughed a ton and I loved spending time with the women in my family.  They are all so awesome!

Some Fun Pictures from this weekend

We went and played at the park for a little while on Saturday.  It was such a nice day so we layed on a blanket and let the boys play.  Brooks was being a little ham for me so I have lots of pictures of him.  Uncle Brooks broke his wrist snowboarding on Friday night so this is how he enjoyed the park

My boys played on the playground and only got in one or two fights.  They loved this toy

Here is another picture of Brooks that I like!

It was a really fun day and I'm so glad we got to spend some time with Heather and Brooks.

Poor Corey!

Last night was one of those nights. We put the kids to bed a little later than usual but it wasn’t super late. Terence and I had gone to bed and right as I was just about to fall asleep Corey started crying. This is not too unusual for him, he wakes up at least once a night on a pretty regular basis so I went into his room to see what was wrong. I don’t typically turn on the light because I want him to go back to sleep as quickly as possible. As I grabbed around his back to pick him up my hands squished into something. Oh yeah, Corey had thrown up all over the place. I took him out of his crib and brought him into my room to get him cleaned up. We changed his pj’s changed the sheets on his bed comforted him and put him back in his room. Within 10 minutes he was crying again. I knew at that point this was going to be a long night. Instead of having both Terence and I not get any sleep I sent Terence downstairs to sleep on the couch. Kids want their Moms when they are sick so there was no point in trying to fight it. I cleaned Corey up once again and had him lay with me in our bed. Every 10-20 minutes for the entire night Corey threw up. After the first couple of times there was nothing left in his stomach so he just ended up having dry heaves and spitting up stomach acid. He was miserable! I felt so bad because I now when a kid is sick like that there is nothing you can do but let it run its course. He must have been super uncomfortable because every time he woke up he moved to a different part of the room, one time he was sleeping on the floor, then he was up on our bed, then he was at the end of the bed with his head on my feet. Also at some point during the night Connor must have heard the commotion and decided to join us. He lay in my bed and talked to me and Corey most of the night. I actually did not mind having him in there because he helped me with Corey. Around 4am Corey asked me for some water, I was very conservative in the amount I gave him since I knew it was probably going to come back up anyway. Sure enough about 20 minutes after he drank the want Mt. Corsuvius blew. We had to change the sheets on the bed, the pillow cases, our clothes, his clothes everything. Unfortunately for Terence not only does he have a very sick little boy to take care of today he also has a lot of laundry to do. Hopefully this is just a quick bug and he gets to feeling better soon. Poor little guy!  

3.22.2010

Today was a pretty average day but was also really fun.  I went to work as usual which is not really fun but I don't mind it.  After work we met up with our good friend Nate and Krista and headed to the gym.  We have been going to the gym quite a bit lately and are really enjoying the time we spend working out and the time our kids get to spend playing with the other kids in their daycare area.  After we were done at the gym we had Nate and Krista over for dinner.  We all got to talking and they ended up staying until 10:15!  It's really nice because they have a daughter who is close in age to our boys and the three of them love playing together.  We love Nate and Krista, they are great friends and we really enjoy having the opportunity to spend time with them.

Update

I did a ton of fun things this weekend and have lots of pictures to prove it.  I was so busy in fact that I did not blog.  Just know there are some exciting adventures coming from this weekend.  Stay tuned.

brain dump

these are all the different things I have running through my head right now

I think if I had a tattoo I would want to wash it all the time
I have a love hate relationship with Dr. Pepper
I think it's funny when people mix up phrases like "its not rocket surgery"
Terence thinks I'm a dictator, sometimes I am. Most of the time I'm not
I wish my hair would grow out so I can get my cut fixed
I am really sore right now
I hate it when my clothes are too small; right now everything is too small
I am overwhelmed, in general
I probably should whine less and pray more
I have to get more than four hours of sleep tonight
I am really glad tomorrow is Friday
I'm super excited that Heather is in town for the weekend
Today is Baby Brooks birthday; I can't believe he is one already
I need to get baby Brooks a birthday present, something REALLY loud to bug his parents.
Phineas and Ferb is a great show, we watch it a lot
I need to take more pictures to put on my blog
Tonight I went to the gym and worked out for an hour then had McDonalds or dinner
I just had to send Connor to bed for the third time tonight
Today I told Terence I wanted to quit my job, I meant it.
I know I cannot quit my job
I missed Survivor tonight, I wonder if the Heroes lost again
I wish there was something that I was really good at. I am always amazed by people who have natural talents like singing, dancing or writing.
If I had the money I would open my own restaurant
I am 28 years old and still can’t spell restaurant without spell check
I used to have a Twitter account but I cancelled it because I think Twitter is weird
If I ever got a tattoo I would get a wedding ring tattooed on my ring finger
I would have been 13 weeks pregnant tomorrow

Jacki...J-A-C-K-I

I spell my name weird, I know. I remember the day I started spelling it this way. I was in first grade and came home from school one day with Jackie written on one of my assignments. I am not sure how the subject came up but my mom said something along the lines of "everyone spells Jackie with an E at the end, why not be individual and take the E off?" So I did. I have spelled it without the E ever since. I think it works for me even though Jacki is not really technically my name, it's Jaclyn. It was an early lesson in non-conformity that stuck. Funnily enough as I was writing this I thought about another lesson in non-conformity that my mom taught me at a young age.  (Probably not so much a lesson as she was just trying to get my goat).
I remember one day in elementary school sitting at lunch with my friends and noticing that all of their sandwiches were cut into two triangles (diagonally). I went home and asked my mom if she could cut my sandwich into triangles too and she said no because she wasn’t going to conform to the way everyone else did it. When you are a third grader and you go to school with your two lame rectangular half’s of a sandwich that can seem like a pretty big deal. I remember being so mad about it. Now I look back on it and laugh. I probably will do the same things to my kids.
Oh and to my siblings: don’t get on here saying that this never happened…it did.

Anxiety…

I have some of the best in-laws in the world. They are some of the kindest, most loving, warmest people you will ever meet! Today Terence has to go to the unemployment office in Everett as he is being audited for his job search (for the 900th time). Normally I would work from home in the morning so he could go or we would have Emily or someone from church watch the boys. Unfortunately this morning none of those options were available. Terence called his Mom last night and asked if there was any way she could do it. Being the AMAZING person she is she was able to arrange having the morning off of work to watch our boys.
Here is where the anxiety comes in; she is watching them at our house. Normally when Terence’s Mom and Dad visit we spend a good portion of the day cleaning, vacuuming, scrubbing toilets. Unfortunately given the short notice and the fact that we spent our entire evening yesterday playing (more to come on that) the house was not on the priority list. I know my mother-in-law (btw I hate calling them in-laws; it has such a negative connotation. But for the sake of definition they will remain defined as such in this blog. I actually just call them Mom and Dad) would never judge me based on my housekeeping skills; however I want her to come into my home and feel like her son and grandsons are being well taken care of. Either way Terence and I both really appreciate her taking time out of her super busy day to drive all the way out to Sultan to watch the boys for a couple of hours.
Thanks Grammy! You’re the best, sorry about the dog hair and fingerprints smeared on the bathroom mirror!

So Random!

1. Terence can run a 5k, impressive!
2. I don't mind Terence being gone but I really prefer having him home
3. My kids are getting better about being reverent in church, fruit snacks help that
4. Babyonboard.com is NOT a website that has anything to do with babies, or the BOB stroller (which is what I was looking for when I stumbled upon it) do NOT go to this website…
5. I really enjoy spaghetti, Terence really dislikes it
6. Two kids by your self is a lot of work!
7. I am not as patient as I would like to be
8. Day light savings time is stupid!
9. Jared and Emily are awesome and I really appreciate everything they do for us. We will never be able to repay them
10. I appreciate my Aunt Valerie more now than I ever did before. Makes me wonder who else in my life I am taking for granted. Probably everyone!
11. I am way more motivated to clean my house if it is raining outside
12. Terence and I have decided to do Atkins starting tomorrow (we would start today but we don’t have the right food in our house)
13. I have to lose 35lbs ASAP
14. I wish my sister lived close by so we could work out together
15. I am excited to be planning Emily’s ward baby shower, it’s going to be epic!
16. I am thankful for my kid’s primary teachers. Nursery and Sunbeams are not easy callings
17. I can’t believe I have a kid in sunbeams already. Where has the time gone?
18. I am considering getting my bachelors in nutrition instead of nursing…I am debating. I know I would love nursing and be really good at it. I think becoming a nutritionist would be an awesome job and something that I am passionate about. Decisions, decisions.
19. I like being the beehives teacher but it is a hard calling. There is a lot of responsibility being a youth leader
20. My parents are awesome! I love them so much! I miss them; it has been a really long time since the last time we hung out.
21. I should be working, not blogging.

Today

Today was a good day! We did not really do much of anything but it was nice to spend some time together with the whole family. Our kids woke up this morning at 6:30 and we hung out in our bedroom until probably 8:30. After we finally dragged our lazy selves out of bed we got dressed and headed out to Chaplins to pick up my car. They fixed the engine speed sensor, replaced a light bulb, fixed something that was wrong with my driver side door and replaced something that was under recall. Everything was under warranty with the exception of the light bulb.
After we were done at Chaplins we headed over to the Barnes and Noble in Woodinville to look for a book. I did not realize it but Connor and Corey have never really been in a library or a book store, go ahead judge me. Connor walked into the store and first thing out of his mouth was "Mommy there are so many books!” With that Terence and I instantly made a detour to the kids section to let them look around. They loved it so much! It was super fun to watch them looking at all the different things; they also played in the little children’s reading area. I love those little moments where you can just sit back and watch your kids be kids. They are so innocent and sweet, I love it! We bought the books we needed and headed home. Our kids were both pretty tired from getting up so early so we had “quiet time”. Connor no longer takes naps but Corey and the rest of the family do so we call it quiet time when Connor can be downstairs and hanging out but he needs to be quiet so those who would like to rest can. It works about 50% of the time.
By the time we were done with quiet time Terence had to get ready to go. He is running in a St Patrick’s Day 5k with his sister Talia tomorrow. I hope he does great! The boys and I made spaghetti for dinner then hung out on the couch watching Sonny with a Chance and iCarly until bedtime. Now I am hanging out of the couch with both dogs snoring next to me and the boys sound asleep upstairs. I just got a call from Talia that she is shopping with Terence and he is complaining about her touching everything, sounds like they are having a good time. I wish I could be down there with them; I hate it when people have fun without me. Plus it would be really fun to cheer them on at the finish line. Oh well. Today was a fun relaxing day. Looking forward to the Sabbath tomorrow.

2 years, 2 months, 2 days

I just added two of those little things on the side of my blog that track things for you.  I did one for Connor and Corey.  I just noticed after I did Corey's that he is 2 years, 2 months and 2 days old today.  I thought that was interesting, just wanted to share. 

Oh yeah and Corey has an ear infection again.  This is the third one he has had in the last 4 months.  Our doctor told us he thinks Corey might need tubes in his ears.  Hopefully he doesn't.

Good Music

Yesterday I uploaded a bunch of church music to my Zune.  I figured I could listen to it when I was driving to and from work.  I seriously underestimated the power that this kind of music has!  Many of these albums I have are things that I used to listen to many years ago.  I still know all the words but they have different meaing to me now that I am a wife and mother.  This morning I was listening to the album Women of Destiny and this song brought me to tears.  It feels very applicable to what is going on in my life right now but it also reminds me of why thing happen.  I'm grateful that I was able to hear this message this morning.  It is what I needed.

She sees the storm clouds gather
The sky is turning cold and gray
She knows that somethings coming
when she starts to feel this way

She pleads for intervention
But heaven offers no relief
she would understand if she could only see

Sometimes He lets it rain
He lets the fierce winds blow
Sometimes it takes a storm
to lead a heart where it can grow

He can move mountains of grief
and oceans of pain.
But sometimes he lets it rain.

When her heart surrenders
to the master in control
Her spirit learns the lessons
and the tempest in her soul

when it's no longer raging
She can see how far she's come
through the wisdom and
the mercy of the Son

Sometimes He lets it rain
He lets the fierce winds blow
Sometimes it takes a storm to
lead a heart where it can grow

he can move mountains of grief
and oceans of pain
but sometimes He lets it rain.
There is no joy without the pain
Sometimes He has to let it rain.

So Proud!

Please allow me to indulge myself for a minute, I am going to brag. I am so proud of Terence. For those of you who read his blog you know that he has been doing school to get a personal training certificate through WSU. He has been working incredibly hard! He studies everyday for at least three hours if not way more. He has been sacrificing hours of Xbox and playtime to get this done. He has A’s in both of his classes which is not easy, one of his teachers is a major stickler and takes off points for just about anything he can. The quizzes are extremely hard and require a ton of studying. He has been inspirational to me and has made me realize that if you really set your mind to it you can accomplish anything.
Sometimes things turn out to be a blessing in disguise. If Terence did not have this time off of work he might not have been able to go back to school and do this. I’m really proud of him. You’re awesome Terence! Keep it up.

Allow me to introduce myself

I am a 28 year old hard working mother of two amazing boys with an incredible husband (who happens to be a stay at home dad/student) a mortgage, a car payment, and various other bills. What I am not is someone who qualifies for financial aid for school, nothing, not a penny of grant money. Unfortunately that means that until I am able to get some student loans my plans to go to school are on hold. It really sucks because I feel like I’m a responsible person who tries to do the right thing; I would be the ideal candidate to give grant money to, I would put it to good use. Instead I have to decide whether or not it is worth it to put my family into debt for me to attend school. It feels really backwards to me and I’m pretty frustrated about it. Anyway sorry for the little rant! This will not deter me; I will find a way to go to school. If anyone has any suggestions on things that have worked for them let me know.

17 out of 99…

After visiting Heather and Brooks down in Pullman I made a life changing decision. I’m going to go to school. I really enjoyed touring the WSU campus and seeing all the people there who are getting degrees made me think, why not me? So after talking to Terence about it and getting his support I started the process of enrolling in Cascadia Community College. I will be going to school to become a Registered Nurse.
Anyway part of the registration process for attending CCC is that I have to take an assessment test. I did awesome on the English parts of the test 98/99 and 96/99. Then came math, I have never been very good at math and in high school I did not pay particular attention to it. I can honestly say I had no idea how to do 90% of the questions on this test. When the results came back I had a 17/99 and a 32/99. I called Terence and told him about it and he laughed hysterically. I am not too worried about it since I have a couple of options. I can take a couple of math classes until I get up to a college level or I can study on my own and retake the test until I get up to the college level. We’ll see, I have not decided yet.
I am very excited to be going to school for something that I really want to do. I may be crazy and lose my mind being so busy over the next four years but I think it will be worth it in the end.

Sunday in the Park

Yesterday Jared and Emily invited us to meet them over at Osprey Park so Jared and Terence could run the RC cars and we could let the kids play on the equipment. Felicia and her kids came along too. We had a great time letting the kids run around and watching the cars race but the really fun but the best part was when Jared suggested we make an obstacle course out of the playground equipment. Felicia and Terence are two of the most competitive people I know so of course they were totally game and I’m always in for a challenge.

The course was basically a loop of a medium size playground going up and over the various obstacles. Emily timed us using a stopwatch on Felicia’s phone. I think Felicia won all four times that we did it. It was a lot of fun! I am starting to notice a theme, I tend to play on playground equipment more than my kids do.

From Crock Pot to Crack Pot

Corey broke the lid to our crock pot on Saturday.  Nothing really exciting about it I just thought it was a creative title for a blog.  Oh and the little shards of glass hurt really bad when you stepped on them, Terence and I both found that out the hard way.

Vacuum Cleaner

Tonight I had no idea what to blog about. Terence told me to close my eyes, follow the sound of his voice, look in his direction, open my eyes and whatever the first thing I saw would be the thing that I blogged about. This happened to be the vacuum cleaner.

Our vacuum cleaner is a Hoover Wind Tunnel, it’s purple, it has a hepafilter that needs to be replaced and it has a big piece of duct tape across the top of it that holds it together. It’s not the best vacuum on the planet but it gets the job done. My dream would be to get a vacuum that sucks up everything in its path. I have heard the Oreck makes good ones. Maybe someday I will buy myself a grown up Oreck vacuum.

I know, I know boring blog tonight! What can I say? It’s been a pretty uneventful day.

Family Pictures

It has not been very long since we have had our family pictures done (we did them back in December) but I want to do them again. The night that we had our pictures done we had some lady in front of us who took forever picking out her pictures which made our session late. By the time we actually got in to have them done our kids were done! Our pictures turned out pretty cute but they are very studio/staged feeling. I would love to have pictures of my kids playing outside our being natural. Maybe I will get them done this spring when the flowers are all blooming (oh wait that’s right now). Anyone have a really good (not too expensive) photographer they can recommend.
On a side note, I had surgery today. Everything went fine. I am sore and tired tonight but finally am starting to feel better.

Potty time!

The last couple of days Corey has been telling us that he has to go potty in the potty. We were thinking yeah right he's barely two he can't possibly be interested in going potty. However the last couple of days he has been putting himself on the toilet and using it! I’m amazed! Connor took until he was over three to get to that point. I think we will probably start Corey into Pull Ups soon and see how it goes. Wish us luck!

Abusing Playground Equipment

The park that we hung out at while and Brooks and Heather’s house is awesome! It has all the fun old-school equipment that parks don’t have any more for lame liability reasons. They had a huge tall twisty slide and a merry-go-round that was definitely well used. Being members of the VanderHoeven Machine we could not resist. We had Terence spin us on the merry-go-round until we were so dizzy we could not walk and then tried to run to a point of interest few yards away. Heather was much better at this then I was.

The twisty slide was also pretty irresistible to us! What do you do when you have a tall slide and four adults? Add wax paper and boom, instant rocket launcher. Ok maybe I am exaggerating but only by a little. Brooks was by far the fastest he flew off the end of that slide so fast we almost fell off of it. Terence, Heather and I also tried it. I did feel a little guilty because as we were getting ready to go a little kid came to play on the slide. With his SpongeBob balloon tied firmly to his wrist he climbed to the top of the slide and proceeded to fly down it. He did not get hurt and I think he enjoyed it. He kept going up and down the slide screaming whoopee, fast slide all the way down. It was pretty fun.

Terence's Twin

While we were at the park last night we found Terence's Twin.  See if you can determine which one is Terence and which is his twin.  I guess everyone had a doppleganger.

Boise State

Sorry but my next few blog posts will probably all be about our little trip to Pullman this weekend. When we got there on Sunday afternoon we were trying to figure out something fun to do to entertain the kids. Brooks and Heather have a very small airport a couple of miles away from their house and we thought it would be fun to drive over there and see if we could watch some planes take off and land. What little boy would not love that? Just as we were getting there the Boise State team plane was getting ready to take off. It was really fun for us to watch the plane taxi down the runway and fly into the air. It's still amazing to me that we are able to fly, period. These are some pictures of us at the airport courtesy of Heather Lively photography.

Today...

Was a lot of fun.  We did a lot of things and I have a ton of pictures to share.  I don't have time to blog about it tonight but will add all of it when I get home tomorrow.