Devine Acres Farm Visit

So today was our first pumpkin patch visit of the year. (we have several planned) Ethan had a blast although I wish Andrew could have gone because he definitely wore my patience thin. Yay for 2. I'm glad we  went though. I think his favorite part was rearranging pumpkins and then playing in the big sand hill with all the sand toys and trucks. We did come home with a pumpkin that was mostly painted by mommy, but none the less, a great start to the holiday season.

We checked out Devine Acres Farm which also sells Christmas trees:
Check out their website here!

Ethan finding a pumpkin:

So tomorrow I go back to work and then get to cram for my math test on Monday. yay for the real world.



Soap Box entry

                                                     Angry Music
So some people think that certain music can influence children to make bad decisions and behave badly. My secret confession: I love Eminem. The beat and the anger in his songs (although I don't always agree with the lyrics of course) seems to dissolve all the anger and frustration I have in me which usually is a lot.
I seriously can say that his music hasn't caused me to make bad decisions, in fact I'm a pretty successful person. What does this tell you? People want an excuse. They are so busy not being role models and expecting other people to raise even their own children instead of working as a community. I've always heard that it takes a community to raise a child. Now I suppose it takes Medicaid, food stamps, and free childcare.

Life in the Always Out of Time Lane

So our house venture didn't quite come through. On the plus side, we landed in a super cute apartmant located near everything we could possibly need except distant relatives. I love it and it's sure a lot heck easier to clean than a house, although it still is never clean.

One possible reason that it is never clean because I find myself stretched way too thin in my various roles of life. The role of student has completely taken over a great percentage of my time as I spent 10 hours in the last 24 hours preparing for 1 test. I struggled for a long time as role of housekeeper and mother and student and employee. What I found is that I have to work to keep my husband happy, I have to do well in school or it's all pointless, and I have to spend "fun" time with my son other than putting him to bed at night or I will regret it the rest of my life. That leaves little to no time to cook or clean. Or anything else really that enjoy like reading, writing, or crafting. Part of the problem is that I'm chronically tired no matter how much sleep I get. I can sleep 8 to 9 hours a night for weeks and still be falling asleep driving. Hopefully will be seeing the doctor again soon to check out my last blood tests which will either solve the problem or give me a new prescription for hopefully this time adderall since ritalin did not seem to work. We shall see.

I'd like to say my husband has been a good sport in all of this. He definitely understands I can't do everything, but then again, he lets things not be done. I try to remember what is was like when he was going to school and working, how much I did around the house. The only difference was we were going to church as a family making our unit closer. I definitely think church might be the missing peice to this baffling puzzle of time management for my husband and I. Unfortunately we usually both work Sundays. I guess it's another thing on my list of things to work on.

I'd like to share a moment now in the past few months:

This is Ethan with Boko the mascot for Texas State University. I took him to his first game this September and he *loved* it. I'm so excited that I found something that he likes to go and do. We'll definitely be going again, and next time even my husband said he'd want to go!

With only 2 hours to go until I have to go to work for the rest of the day (literally until 9pm) and with my husband still sleeping and my son wide awake I guess it's time to get things done with the house. I get to play role of housewife for the next 2 hours. Joy.

Buying a House

So we're still hoping, praying, crossing fingers, that we're able to buy this house and move in fairly soon. (hopefully before schools start) Other than that....I've been sleeping and not drinking anything but water and cutting out all sweets. It's been difficult, but I've been sugar/soda free for 1 week now!

I've realized I'm pretty awesome at the game of Spades. It is a card came in which my mother and I rock at because we send brain waves to each other. We're awesome. :)

Driving to Rockport tomorrow so Ethan can spend a week or two with Oma and Opa. I will miss him, but I know he'll have fun.

And that's pretty much all for now.
~Monica

The homeschool preschool

That's right. I found the most awesome curriculum for Ethan and it's free!

http://www.abcjesuslovesme.com/

Definitely check it out!

This week we're doing creation Days 1 and 2. We don't really have the money to buy flannelgraphs or even flannel/felt/velcro from the store so I made our own version of a storyboard. I'm pretty excited about it and thought I would share. :)

The First Day: Genesis 1:1-5


 In the beginning God made heaven and earth. At first it was empy and dark.

 But God gathered up the light and called it day.  Then he gathered up the darkness and called it night. God was watching over everything.

The Second Day: Genesis 1:6-8

  On day two God divided the air from the water. He put some water above the air and some below it. He named the air sky.

Wish us luck with our homeschooling endeavors! :)

Until next time,
Monica

I was Gonna....

So I totally had intentions to write the 4th chapter of Competing Blood tonight (even though it's not a day off), but for some reason I have to wait for Microsoft Office to install/download. Boo! On the plus side I did get a lot accomplished today. First off I worked :P then I went to Texas State and turned in my last transcript, but now I have to wait 3 weeks to find out if I'm going to get accepted. :( Boo! Came home and spent some time with Ethan. Who totally has the concept of hitting the ball to keep it bouncing (can we say basketball star?) Love him! Called HEB credit union who suck (why I am I not surprised?). Ran my credit to find it's really not that bad at all. It definitely gives me hopes for the future. Hopefully we can take advantage of this great house for sale for 75,000. We just need to get approved. Let's think, go som re-organizing done. AKA I started my lists. Read Ethan his Library book and went through his shoes to get rid of the ones that don't fit anymore. And now? Going to start defensive driving. :( Might write later if I don't get too tired...

Let's Get Busy

So today's been pretty productive starting at 4 freaking 30 in the morning. That's right. We drove into San Antonio with Andrew on his way to work so we could hang out with the lovely Caitlin and Sarah. Went through Sara's current summer clothes and tried sorting. And Andrew thinks Ethan has too many clothes. ;) Seriously though...Ethan's room is due for an organization. Especially since now I have both cars completely spotless! Yes, I am amazing. And now, I'm going to sit down and write. 2 chapters. That's right. Because if I write 1 chapter everyday I have off work (which is 2, maybe 3 days a week) I'll be done with Competing Blood in 9 weeks. Totally can do it. In the meantime, also enjoy my complete list of titled works which will gradually start to include synopsis and perhaps outlines, and maybe a sprinkle of Harry Potter fanfiction of the amazing Winning Hermione that is for some reason incredibly popular. Tonight my goal is to post the complete list of titled works, finish chapter 3 of Competing Blood, and post chapter 1 here so my beautiful cousin-in-law (shout out to Amber!) if she has a chance can see what it's all about.

P.S. Really hope to watch Tru Blood tonight as well. :)

Ok to work!

So Phineas and Ferb are super cute! And also distracting. And as we learned previously this week, distractions are pointless and unproductive. And my compter is dieing. So since I'm lazy I'm not going to plug it in and actually go do something...like unpack my car and work on the bedroom...and maybe take Ethan to the pool and library. because that's laziness ;) wish me luck!

Distractions are Pointless

And unproductive. Off the next two days...wish my luck!

Distracted!

And now I'm going to work on my curriculum for Ethan instead because I love him. :D :D :D What this entails for now is a notebook with ideas...but I'll keep you posted.

Driving, driving, and more driving

So lately I've been doing a lot of driving. I can't wait for those nifty transporters we see in movies to finally come around to commercial use. In the meantime, I still try to keep on going with life. Today was my first day off since we moved in with my mom. (shout out: Love you mom!) Although artistically it's been fantastic, we're still trying to adjust household wise. I think it's just a matter of getting our schedules down and unpacking all of our tons of stuff. Literally tons. Like 27 boxes built in towers in my son's bedroom. Who by the way I love so very much.

So on my first day off I had a doctor's appointment in SA with my awesome therapist. I decided to bring Ethan along and we had quite a day. He was really behaved everywhere we went. First to the therapist, then to Northwest Vista community College, then to McDonald's for lunch, then to the admissions department for Texas State. After all that we have the results that I'm doing better in life, Ethan can eat a complete happymeal, Northwest Vista sucks when it comes to getting transcripts, and Texas State has no sympathy. I get to call Northwest Vista on Monday to check the status of my transcript which last month they printed but never mailed resulting in me not being able to start with Summer II. After getting home I got the lovely job of calling the water and electric to turn it off at the old house only to find out that it had already been done.

Then I cooked tacos for dinner which were delicious, did a load of laundry, and got us ready to go to the pool in San Marcos. My mom, Ethan, and I trekked to the Activity Center in San Marcos to go swimming for about an hour. Ethan had a blast as he usually does in the water with absolutely no fear of swimming under water. (he's such a water baby) Afterwards he headed over to the public library to sign up for a library card and checked out a couple of books. On the way home we stopped at sonic to finish our day. With an hour left in my day before I really should be going to bed, I plan to retrieve all my writings from the external hardrive and work on the next chapter of Competing Blood. We'll see how that turns out. Tomorrow if I wake up early enough I might be able to finish the chapter...I really wanted to go back to the activity center to either swim/dance/workout before work...but we'll see. Tomorrow's Friday and then I'm off for the weekend, yay!

Breakfast of a Champion

So as I have my fudge popsicle and homeade iced coffee for breakfast I'm thinking of what I'm going to do for the 1 hour I have left before I go to work. I should probably eat something real for lunch considering I'm only working 6 hours today and therefore will not get a lunch break. Super excited because I'm going to make a trip to my mom's tomorrow. Love her. :) Hope to have the third chapter of Competing Blood finished by then. Was working on it last night but my husband distracted me with a Desperate Housewives Marathon.

Oh must absolutely share these fantastic websites I found. These are absolutely brilliant!

http://www.crafty-moms.com

http://www.creativehomemaking.com

http://www.christian-parent.com

I swear I found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow here. So many things I want to try. But first...I should eat something!

Living Room Productions

So in the process of moving we moved our living room set to the other "living area". In doing so it has greatly improved my production process! I finished a new chapter of Competing Blood and the 17th chapter of Winning Hermione my most popular fanfiction. Check out the Desk page to read! I also got in the dancing mood and played some Evanescence. Who knows. Maybe the dancing/choreography will continue again as well. My goals now? To keep writing and maybe open a book!

Musings from a Cluttered Desk

As a mom of a 2 year old, a full time employee and a full time student, I think I deserve every right to have a very cluttered writing agenda. I have several stories and fanfictions that I have partly written and even planned out. My goal..to be published either as an e-book or old-fashioned binded paper. On the plus side, we're about to move back in with my mom who has always been so supportive of all my endeavors, including the stage of my writings. :)

Crossing my fingers for now!
~Monica