Tip of the Week

Make your own baby wipes at home!!

All you need is a roll of Bounty paper towel, cut in half (so you have 2 short rolls), a large margarine tub, about 2 1/2c of hot water and 2-3 tbsp of baby bath. Mix the water and baby bath in the tub, place the paper towel in (standing up). Do not take out the cardboard centre right away, the water will make it soft and it will pull out easily. Now you are ready to use them..the paper towel will pull out from the centre of the container. Make sure you seal the container though...it will dry out.

Also..the BEST thing for diaper rash...apply vaseline and then cornstartch! Works like a charm!! (careful though...do not grab the flour by mistake, I did that and my daughters diaper looked like she was making cake dough!!)

~Helen

See you later.

After listening to Lisa Rendall speak last week it really made me think. I definitely know I don't live each day to it's fullest. I don't appreciate all that I should. I don't tell my husband or children that I love them every single day. My kids have left for school angry or upset with me and I didn't do anything to make it better because I was just as frustrated. We all know we need to slow down and take time to smell the roses... so why don't we?

Every day someone loses a loved one. Every day is another year since someone passed away. I've always felt that one of the hardest parts of losing someone you love is life. How do you continue on with life when you feel like your whole world has fallen apart? When it feels wrong to continue on with the mundane day to day tasks? Taking those steps to everyday life means letting go just a little bit more, it takes you further away from that person that you just don't want to let go of.

You hear a lot of people say they wished they could've said goodbye. Both of my Grandma's are gone - one passed away when I was seventeen and the other 5 years ago. The first I didn't get to tell her goodbye and I was with my other Grandma in the hospital when she died. For 10 years I kept having dreams about my first Grandma and in the dreams I was always trying to tell her I loved her. Now logically I know that she knew I loved her - but there's something different about saying I love you to someone on their way out the door to work and saying I love you to someone you know is dying.

We are all going to die and we need to treat each day as if it might be the last (sounds like a country music song I know). Tell them you love them every day and always remember that it's not goodbye, it's see you later. It might be work, a weekend hockey tournament, a 2 week vacation... or it might be a car accident. There are no parting words that will make anyone feel better about losing someone. The pain will never completely go away - but I take some comfort in knowing that I don't have to say goodbye because I know I'll see them later... and they will be just as excited to see me as I am to see them.

'MOMS Favorite Recipes' Booklet!!

Our MOMS Recipe booklet...

Each mom will bring 2 recipes, one is your favorite recipe and the other will coordinate with the table number you are at for Fall term...

Table one-Supper

Table two-Dessert

Table three-Dessert

Table four-Supper

Table five-Salad

Table six-Appy

Please bring your copy this coming Tuesday or the following Tuesday, Oct. 6th. There are extra forms on our back table if you lost yours of if you want to submit more great recipes!!

Thanks Ladies!!

~Helen

Resentful Mom?

I had a breakdown last night and I don't like to admit that to anyone so I figured I might as well blog it.

Note to self... I AM NORMAL.

I am a Mom and I stay home. I'm a stay at home Mom. I know I made a choice to stay home but does that mean I have to like it all the time? What happened to Shauna? If someone asked me to talk about me could I do it? Well, don't answer that but seriously - how do I define myself? How do YOU define yourself? Can you see past the toys, laundry, dinners, sports, kids, husband, work, house and find your soul - what makes you, well, you?

Why do I look forward to Tuesday mornings? Because I know that every other woman in that room would understand EXACTLY how I am feeling and nobody would judge. How do you stop doing something you like? Where do you draw the line and say no (and I'm not talking about your kids here)? I think we all need to take a step back and figure out what's really important, decide what we want to do about it and then (and this is the hardest part) follow through.

I am now sitting here deciding whether or not to post this blog. Yikes. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna click the "publish post" button below I mean I'm still typing aren't I? There's something about baring your innermost thoughts to people you don't know but most of you reading this know me and I have a tendency to put on a good show - life is great, um... sometimes it is.

If you're going to respond to this post (apparently I'm going to post it because as metioned before I'm still typing) it can't be anything related to sorrow or sympathy or "it'll be okay we all go through it" kind of things. I want you to tell me what makes you YOU and how you remember what makes you YOU. A therapist once said to me, "When you're on an airplane and the attendents are demonstrating what to do in case of an emergency think about the oxygen masks... put yours on first and then help your children or others around you." Wow, someone actually telling a Mom to think about herself first... but the kicker is it's true.

How my 2 year old broke my nose!

What a good morning! It felt so good to be back at MOMS. I am so glad we have a room leader for every room AND a Child Coordinator. It was also great of Joanne to come and help us out - the first morning is such a busy one!!!

So I told y'all I would tell you how Jeremy broke my nose and here I am - telling you yet another story. All righty... my daughter Megan (who is 7) has bunk beds in her room. Jeremy loves going on the top bunk and is great at climbing up the ladder... but doesn't like coming back down. So he sits at the top cross legged and yells for us to come get him down. Here is how he comes down - he count to three or counts backwards from five like the Little Einsteins and then freefalls forward headfirst with his arms out and we catch him.


Tuesday, August 11, 2009

This next paragraph happened over the course of about 5 seconds... I am standing there waiting for him to come down but was looking to the right when he quickly counted backwards and fell forward - so his head caught the the left side of my nose/eye/forehead. Now this is the important part - I CAUGHT HIM... but then immediately put him down when I heard the crunch (you're all squirming in your seats right now with that heeby jeeby feeling in your stomach) and screamed. I put my hand up to my nose and moved it back and forth at the top (again, you've got the heeby jeeby feeling in your stomach), put my hand under my nose to catch the stream of blood that started coming and thought to myself... "Oh x-x-x-x (4 letter word for crap that's not nice) this can't be happening" and by the time that thought was finished I had my head over the sink and had grabbed the closest cloth that was there - which happened to be a Norwex cloth (insert crap word again here).

This next paragraph happened over the course of about 2 minutes... the girls come running asking what happened before I was out of the bedroom. I tell them Jeremy broke my nose and they both start crying and screaming. So now all three of my kids are screaming while I'm hanging over the bathroom sink. Jeremy is trying to crawl up my leg as I yell to Sydney (she's 9) to get the phone and call her Dad (she informed me afterwards she thought she was gonna get to call 911). A side note here is that my best friend lives right across the street and she is ALWAYS home - literally, she does daycare and is always home during the day - but they had taken a 3 day trip to Lethbridge. So, Megan ran screaming back into her room and slammed the door shut so I was yelling for her to come and get Jeremy away from me. Ryan gets on the phone and I tell him Jeremy broke my nose and there's nothing... silence... then he says, "Are you sure?" WHAT????? Seriously???? I tell him to come home then hang up on him cause I feel like I'm gonna get sick but thankfully didn't. Megan is now in the living room and yells at me, "How do know it's broken?" ***WARNING - THE NEXT SENTENCE IS RATED R**** I reply, "Because it's f*$#ing crooked and it's moving!" Yep, I dropped the f-bomb on my 7 year old. SHE starts crying again and says, "But I don't want a Mommy with a crooked nose!". Ha... ha ha... ha. No, I was not laughing for real.

Ryan gets home, we get ahold of our other neighbour and his son comes over to watch the girls - irony here is that he's 10... and Sydney is 9... but his Dad was home in case he needed any help. I wasn't too concerned about the kids at that moment. We head to Emergency at St. Paul's - I wait for 3 hours to be told that there is too much swelling and fluid to do anything there. He gets me an appointment with an ENT (ear, nose, throat) for Monday morning and says he'll fix it up then for me. I spend the entire weekend FREAKING out because this is gonna hurt only to be told that "Oh no, that is much too uncomfortable to do in the office" and get booked in for surgery that Thursday. Surgery? Yep. Surgery.

The Aftermath...

There isn't much to the story after this point - surgery was okay. I felt like crap afterwards and had to eat my lasagna with my head laying on the table I felt so sick but I was soooo hungry (I'm a big fan of food) cause all they gave me afterwards was 2 pieces of toast. Those of you who saw me at church that Sunday saw me with a splint and the after effect of this whole thing is a crooked nose. Yes, if you look carefully you'll see that it's a bit crooked but I have decided against doing anything to fix it cause that would mean surgery again - and I figure as long as my breathing is okay why mess with a good thing. As far as I'm concerned my crooked nose = another life story.

Tip of the week

As a ministry team we have decided to use this blog to stay interactive with all of you! So in order to do this we must keep it up to date, and interesting. One of the ideas was to add a tip of the week. So watch for them. Also please feel free to comment on this blog and use it as yours! Also don't forget to check us out on Twitter and Facebook!

When getting organized for back to school try this tip. Use permanent marker to help keep track of childrens clothing. One dot on oldest childs clothing tags, two dots on middle childs clothing tags, three dots on youngest, and so on. Then all you have to do is add a dot for hand me downs! Makes folding laundry much less of a game of guess who.

They're letting me blog so you gotta read my stories now!

I have been entrusted to blog on the site - wheee!!!! I'll start off easy so they don't kick me out after my first entry. So let's start by telling you my MOMS story (if you haven't already seen it at church on the big screen). I met my friend Shelby through a curling iron (seriously) and we soon discovered we have lots in common... kids, staying home, life tribulations, Old Navy and headaches. Our friendship evolved through email and I can't even remember the first time we actually got together in person. At some point in time Shelby mentioned MOMS and at some point I asked her if it was "churchy". At that point in my life I wasn't into church - actually, I never had been into church. I come from a Catholic family and pretty much viewed church as stand up, sit down, say this, sing that... very methodical and repetitive (which is my nice word for boring). Not to mention the fact that you had to actually have your kids IN the church with you - I spent more time hunting down fish crackers and toys than I did actually listening to anything that was being said. I decided to give MOMS a try and was hooked. What do I love best about MOMS? Well at first it was the chance to sit and eat breakfast with NO kids present and just relax. Now breakfast is still high on the list (I like food) but the women I have met through MOMS and some of the discussions that have been had are priceless - literally, they are like those Mastercard commercials, money can't buy them and neither can credit. The food, stories, women, laughter and tears - it's Vegas in a church and it all stays in that room. You don't have to hide who you are and you learn that you are not alone. I know we all know that we aren't alone but really - when you hear other Mom's tell the same stories and share the same ups and downs as you it makes you feel NORMAL. Eventually Shelby and her hubby came over for supper so the husbands could meet (thankfully they got along) and they invited us to come to a fall kickoff and then for lunch afterwards. I had been thinking about attending a service for a while and I'm not sure why we never went, maybe the invite was what we needed (maybe the lunch... kidding!). Think back to my description of a Catholic church service... can you snore? No offense to all you Catholics out there but I got more out of this one service than I had out of my thirty some years of being Catholic. Amazing and eye opening. I knew immediately that God was stirring my soul... and he probably started doing it when I met Shelby. Well I can see that this blog thing might become time consuming - I'm liking it! I'm gonna have to learn to make a long story short at some point but since I'm already close to the end of this one I'll stop... almost. My story ends with me still attending MOMS - starting my fourth session next week and I am now a part of the MOM's Ministry Team - and wow, what a group of women they are. I am very grateful to be able to spend time with them and have already learned so much more than I thought possible. I am looking very forward to this term of MOMS and hope that we get to see some new faces out there along with the veterans. BTW - Lakeview Moms is Twittering... join us... it's a super way to quickly check out what's happening at MOM's.