The New Blog

New blog reminder. I will no longer post on this blog.

Go here to be connected to the new blog:

forthelovekhar.blogspot.com

New blog

I finally did it. I made our new blog with a blog title and everything.

It sounds simple but really.......not so much. It's not even really all the way finished yet. I'm still going to get my sister to help me out with a nice customized header (thanks in advance Kim ;) and back-ground and I have all the side pictures to put up, so really it's not even close to being done BUT I got the title and blog link taken care of which seemed to be the most difficult thing for me to decide on AND I posted a tester post for you all to check out, so that's a lot to ask since I have pretty much abandoned this blog the last nine months.

Once I get the blog just the way I like it, I promise I'll get better at getting things posted, promise!

I really have missed blogging, and when I go and look back it makes me sad that I have left things off the blog, even though it's been a busy, crazy last nine months with this big change in our lives I wish I would have been better at recording it all down at the time.

Anyway....You want to know the new blog address right? Here is the link to the NEW Blog
I'll also post the actual link it is forthelovekhar.blogspot.com make sure you switch it over on your readers and blogs and wherever else you have our old blog address because from now on I'll be posting on my "For the LOVE" Blog and this one I'll just post a link at the top for those who haven't visited in a while and don't know that I changed it.

There ya have it my new blog "For the LOVE...."
Yay, for checking this off my list!

Just an update (and maybe some thoughts)

What's new?

*J boy got his first concussion (a minor one, luckiy). I say "first" because I have a feeling that it won't be his last, that kid and his large head....

*Lulu is such a chatter box lately. Conversation is fun for her now. Communication has become a useful tool in her life these days. Some times it's entertaining and other times it's...well....not as entertaining, okay annoying but in a cute baby way (if that makes sense). Along with communicating more, lulu will then gets frustrated more easily when we don't do as she "asks" (or demands rather) and has learned the art of "fit throwing" it's fun :)

*E auditioned for the Missoula Children's Theater play The Secret Garden, one of her favorite books/movies ever! She was so excited about it and even more excited when she got a part (a small part, but a part nonetheless) along with a few of her other friends/classmates. This is such a fun idea, the school hires the Missoula Children's Theater to come and do auditions for kids grades 1-5 (in their school), they provide the play script, set, costumes, the directors etc. and have the kids practice all week and then perform it at the end of the week on Friday for the school and parents. It's been intense, tiring, long hours after school, more than we expected for a simple play with her in just a small part, but I think when it's over she'll be glad she did it. It's been a fun and good learning experience for both of us.

*As for me, nothing new really. I live the "boring" life of a Mother. Because you know we don't do anything at all but stay at home all day every day and watch soaps and eat bon bons right?! Kidding, OBVIOUSLY! I've been keeping busy, but who wants to hear about the poop I cleaned off the floor or the meltdowns I deal with daily or the fights I break up? They are nothing new to me anyway. Lately I have many many moments of missing Indy and our dear friends there. Nothing is enough to totally distract me from missing my friends and Indy Family. It's been an adjustment and it will continue to be an adjustment as we move on with our lives. I guess it's all just apart of life ((sigh)) I just wish it didn't have to be so hard. I don't feel settled here, I don't feel "at home" yet. I don't know, it's hard to explain my feelings on this topic. I feel like I have to keep those feelings inside and close to me, for some reason.

*C is still working at the same office part time and hoping to pick up more hours soon (and I'm hoping for more hours/income too ;) He's liking it but I can tell it's been a bit of an adjustment for him too. We are all just "adjusting" to our new life and it's not always easy, and we don't expect it to be, but yet we/I still long for the simplicity of an "unchanged" life/situation but those moments in life don't stay long, change is inevitable!

Isn't it funny how you long for something (in my case I longed for the day we were out of school done living off of student loans) and then when you have it, you long for the old life you once knew. I guess I'm not necessarily longing to be living off of student loans again but I more long for the comfort of that old life. I knew it so well and how to handle life in that situation, now I have to relearn my way of life. I don't know, I don't know why I'm pouring out my thoughts on this now, this was just supposed to be a quick update. Oops.

So that's us, these days.

Oh and I'm WAY frustrated in trying to find the right name for our blog. We can't stick with Harkers In The Midwest for obvious reasons, but I can't seem to think of a good replacement. Any help or thoughts on a new title for our blog would be widely appreciated! PLEASE I need help.

Faces

This is what I got when I asked her to make a pretty face for the camera.....

Pretty,Kind of??

When E was this age she'd stand in front of a mirror many times a day and practice her faces and she had them to perfection, that girl was good. I should have gotten her an agent....Happy, Sad, Mad, Beautiful, Pretty, Scared, Excited, innocent, Pensive.....she had so many and they were all different. Man, we could have made money off that girl!

Well, her sister is not quite as experienced and needed some practice so I thought I'd help her learn her faces (of course I had to get the camera to document and show her what she needed to work on). This is what we got.......

I love these, they are hilarious!

Happy.....okay let's try another one

Mad.....close

Scared? Silly? don't remember but this came out......need more practice I guess

This is her best one unfortunately it was real, no acting involved.

I said "just one more" her response was NO! "Please one more, do Sad" And then she started to cry.
Very good, that's what we're looking for!

All done for the day. See you tomorrow, same time same place.


She needs a little work. She's no E that's for sure. She'll get there and soon she'll have perfected her eye roll as her big sissy has, yay can't wait!

Random pictures, just for fun

Every day I look out the kitchen widows as I clean dishes, prepare meals, sweep floors etc. (I live in my kitchen) and I can't help but stop and take in the beauty of the country out in my back yard. And some times I just have to take pictures of it.

Here are a bunch of the pictures I have taken out my kitchen window......

Sunny with a Beautiful blue sky/green grassCool looking clouds at sunset

Dark clouds at first snow

Frozen Frost on everything (c took this picture)

Beautiful sunset behind the mountains (looks like a painting)

Foggy

Another beautiful sunset that made the clouds pink

And here is a view of the windows I get to look out of.
C took this picture the day he took all the other frost pictures.

I'm really enjoying the beauty of the country I see out my windows daily.

Other Random pictures.....

AAHHH crazy teeth

There, that is less scary and more beautiful

Our little cowgirl. You'd think we lived in Idaho or something ;)

My handsome boy, he's growing up too fast.

Just doing a little light reading (dental magazines are so riveting)

C had a small injury to his finger. He jammed it while playing B-Ball with the scouts. Lucky it was just his mirror hand or he would have been in trouble.

That's all for now

Christmas 2011, one to remember

First I will tell you the good parts about our Christmas and then I'll tell you the part "to remember".

*I didn't have to travel this year!!!!!! This is the first year ever since I moved out of the house at 18 years old that I have not had to travel for Christmas. That means I've been traveling (mostly airports, which I hate) during the Holidays for 12 years! It was WONDERFUL to not have to step foot in an air port this year, wonderful I say!

*I think we did a good job of keeping the focus of Christmas on Christ this year. I know of some ways to improve but it was still so good.

*I made some yummy easy treats for J boy to pass out to teachers etc. at school and watching him get into the spirit of giving was so fun, he loved it!

*This year we kept it simple (at least on our end, my family seems spoil my kids) and it was nice. The kids got one "big present" a couple small ones and some jammies. I think it was perfect. The kids didn't even think much about it. Actually I lied, J boy did say after he opened his few presents "Is that all my presents?" luckily I could say "you'll get more at Grandmas" silly boy. Now, of course he has forgotten about his "so few" presents and is obsessing over his scooter (his "big" gift).

Look at our cute tree with just a small amount of presents (notice how some are not wrapped, I was sick on Christmas Eve okay!)

Enjoying their new scooters...

*My favorite reaction was from J boy. Daddy got him a batman mask (he's obsessed with Batman) and when he opened it, the look on his face was Priceless. He was so happy he was close to crying, it was cute. Then at Grandmas house my sister (who spoils him rotten) got him the bat cave toy he wanted so badly and he was so excited about that too, yet again another great reaction!

*All my siblings made it out as usual and that is always fun, crazy but fun! Again, it was great that this year they all came to me (and my parents) and I didn't have to go anywhere.

This was taken on our "girls" day my Mom planned for us.
My poor brother....at least he has some brother in-laws to hang with.

*We got a white Christmas! It wasn't as much snow as we wanted but enough to build a snowman or two!

*C picked up some more hours at work over the Holidays which was nice as he is only working part time right now and we needed the extra money around the holidays.


Now for the part to remember.......

I have taken for granted all those Christmas' that my family and I were relatively healthy and could enjoy doing the typical Christmas-y things.

This year our luck ran out and we suffered from the Stomach flu, ya know the barfing-diarrhea-gross-don't-even-want-to-talk-about-it kind of flu, yep that's what we had, ALL of us! We were lucky that for the most part it was only a 12-24 hour type of flu, with the exception of lulu.

It started in the wee hours of the early morning on Christmas Eve. Lulu woke up around 2am and began barfing every 10-20 minutes for the next 12 + hours. Then she continued to feel sick and upset tummy for the next 48 hours. We ended up Canceling our "sibling ski trip" on Christmas Even, we usually have one every year, because my Sister Kim was sick with the same flu that same night/early morning and so was my Mom (who was supposed to watch the kiddos) and C and I were starting to feel it coming on too.

Sick baby! Sipping on some Pedia-lite that I'm sure she barfed up two minutes later.

After witnessing and cleaning up and helping lulu barf a million and two times I began to feel "upset" in my tummy but it didn't hit me full force until the evening of Christmas Eve. E got it later that day too on Christmas Eve. J boy spent the day playing with all his Aunties over at G-Ma's house the whole day and C stayed home to take care of us sick ones. Thank Heavens C and I didn't get it at the same time, that would have been awful!

I had envisioned a wonderful Christmas Eve for my little Family this year. I made plans to start our own traditions. We never really had any of our own because we were always traveling and it wasn't worth the effort. But this year was supposed to be different. We were going to do Christmas Eve opening of Jammies and individual ornaments and hang them on our OWN tree! We were going to read the Christmas story in the Bible and then make cookies for Santa and then read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and then go to bed early......I was all excited to do our own thing this year. The only thing we managed to do was go to bed early. ((Sigh)) There is always next year, there is always next year.....I just have to keep telling myself that.

Christmas Morning the kids seemed to be feeling better. Lulu had not barfed all night, which was a good sign. E was feeling much better and I was on the mend, still feeling a bit uneasy. Well I thought lulu was all better but she ended up barfing right after stockings and just before we opened our presents.

If this face doesn't say "I'm about to barf" I'm not sure what it says....

And Daddy cleaning it up so we can open our presents....
(Best yard sale find ever... carpet cleaner for $5, we replaced the broken tank for $30.
Cheapest Carpet cleaner ever!)

We ended up going over to G-ma and Papa's anyway on Christmas Morning after our little present opening at our house, hoping it was a fluke thing that lulu was still sick. She was doing ok most of the day but due to all the consumed junk food on Christmas (from stocking candy) and her still sensitive tummy, she ended up barfing a few more times over the next couple of days.

Just as I started feeling normal again Christmas evening, C got it and he got it WAY worse than I had it! Poor guy. I felt so bad for him. So Christmas Day/evening E went over to G-Ma and Papa's to play with all her Aunties all day, while C and then eventually J boy were the sickies, along with lulu who was still not fully recovered and I stayed home and played nurse-mama to all three.

And that is how we spent our Christmas, Sick or taking care of the sick. I told ya it was one to remember.

Christmas day, sickies. (yes, even Bat Man gets sick!)
Watching T.V. all day in Mom and Dads room can't be that bad,
if there was no throwing up involved it would be a kids dream come true.

J boy was still feeling yucky the Day after and so was C. Instead of hanging out with my family that day, we just stayed home and didn't do much, kept it pretty low key.


Out of Me and my little Family and my Parents and siblings and their families (a total of 17 people all together) there was a total of 10 of us that got this flu bug.

What a pathetic group of people we were this Holiday Season. Merry Christmas to us!

There's always next year.....

Fall review with lots of pictures

It's officially Winter now. I don't mind winter at all, I find a lot of beauty in this season and I have found I can enjoy some sports only winter offers which gives me something to look forward to. But I must say winter starts earlier here than in Indiana, not sure how I feel about that yet, I'm sure I'll get used to it.

So far it's been pretty mild with only one or two small dumps of snow, both of which melted with in 24hrs of being dropped.

It's cold these days and we wake up to frost every day now. I must say, having a Garage to put our cars in makes frost less annoying, that's for sure! I've found I can actually enjoy the beauty of frost with out any feelings of hate or annoyance towards it. It really is beautiful on trees and plants, just not on cars :)

Now that it's winter I feel like I need to blog about Fall.

Fall here was lovely and wonderful. I think it had something to do with the fact that we moved into our house and we had a space to call our own. Also it was pretty mild and we enjoyed being outdoors a lot this fall, running and playing in our new back yard. It was a fall to remember!

Halloween was actually bearable temperature wise, not too cold to hit up some door to door knocking and begging for treats :)

I'm sure I have more thoughts on Fall, like the back aches that were caused by raking up 1 million leaves but I'll spare you all the details and let the pictures do that talking.

Two very old, very beautiful and VERY large Oak trees= LOTS of leaves to rake!
Our first dump of leaves.... First of the six or so dumps :)

The kids enjoyed playing in the leaves, the first time around. After that the novelty wore off a bit.

Lulu did not know what to think of the leaves burying her. I think it freaked her out a bit.

Where did she go?

"Nope, don't like it, I'm out'a here"

More room for the big kids to go crazy

Making Halloween sugar cookies with Grandma. Fun and messy!

Lots of sprinkles!

Now, time to eat our sprinkles and frosting, with a bit of cookie underneath :)

And here is the one picture we got of the kids in their Halloween costumes. They thought the face paint was pretty cool this year, some thing we've never really done for them. J boys freaks me out!

Well there it is, our Harker Fall in review.
Now lets see if I can get caught up on this blog.

E's thoughts on Christmas

I want to remember this so I'm writing it down here......

In the car E talking to her brother J boy:

E: Do you know what my favorite Holiday is J?

J: uhhh is it thanks giving? (or some other random holiday, I don't know what he said to be honest)

E: NO! Christmas! Do you know why it's my favorite Holiday?

J: Uuuhh because we have snow outside and we get to go out and play in it? (This kid cracks me up!)

E: NO!

Here is where I held my breath and waited for her response, thinking it would be something about Santa bringing presents or getting lots of gifts, but hoping she would say something about the meaning of Christmas too.

E's response: Because Christmas is a Holiday with real meaning. It's about a real person, Jesus. It's about his birth. And I like that we have a day we can celebrate Jesus.

I almost teared up. I was SO proud. Not once did she bring up Santa or even gifts! What a sweet girl.

Then J said "AND we get presents!" Of course he would :) He's learning though.

E then said to J "But it's not just about getting presents, Santa is the fun part of Christmas and some people don't believe in him but I still do even though I know Santa is the "fun" part of Christmas."

I then went on to tell her that St. Nicolas was a real person at one time and he believed in Jesus Christ and wanted to help others like Jesus taught. I told her it's okay to believe in a real person and that Santa can be a part of Christmas too but that she is right, that Christmas is more about Jesus.

I remember worrying about what to do with the whole Santa thing a couple years back. I remember not wanting to yank it out of Christmas traditions completely but wanting to focus this Holiday mostly on Christ. I guess I felt like lots of kids these days expect HUGE presents or tons of little ones and are disappointed when they don't get what they want. I remember thinking, I don't want my kids to be like that, to be "entitled" as we the future generations are starting to be. I didn't want them to care about all the gifts that they get so much as they care about what this holiday is about. Of course all kids are excited to get presents on Christmas morning but I want them to know that it's okay if it's nothing fancy or huge (whether or not we can afford a big Christmas or not) it's okay to keep Christmas simple and still get fun, exciting presents because Christmas is about, as she put it her self "A real person, Jesus". I was also thinking about how some people play up the whole Santa thing so much and try to have their kids believe in him for as long as possible and that's fine, I don't think it's a bad thing but I do feel bad for the kids that some day they will be totally disappointing that he is not real. I think E will be okay with it and she won't be devastated, especially after that little conversation I heard, and that's good, I'm glad it won't rip her heart out :)

She is getting to be such a big girl with a sweet tender heart. I was so proud and I knew at that moment that I did something right, and that feels good as a Mom.

I love how she kind of knows Santa is not real but that she wants to still believe so she can have a little fun at Christmas. It's the perfect combination of Christmas Tradition, I think. With a lot about Christ and a little fun with Santa.

I was a proud Mom! Now we gotta work on that J boy, he's learning slowly.