Happy Birthday to ME!!!

That's right, today is my birthday. I have had a very nice day. We made breakfast and then I got to walk away and not clean a thing. I got to take a shower without any kids coming in tattling, fighting or banging on the shower door. Then I got to relax the rest of the morning. I went to church and felt very spiritually fed. And now I am sitting on the couch while my dinner cooks after eating dinner (apparently it is taking me awhile to get this posted). I have received many birthday wishes and feel very loved. It has been a very great day.

Which is good coming off this last week. It was a little crazy this week.

Kayla went to science camp for the whole week. She did fabulous! We are so proud of her! We didn't know how she would do but she did great. I think it was harder on Kurt and I to let her go than it was for her to leave. I guess that's a sign of her growing up.

I had a bit of a mommy meltdown this week. The pressures of trying to be everything to everyone just got to me so that day was a bummer.

About 2 weeks ago Trevor decided to potty train himself. It took me about a week to realize that the more I tried to encourage and remind him, the more he would battle me so I gave up. He continued to sporadically tell me (maybe 1-2 times a day) that he had to go but this week he has done really great. Every day his successful trips to the potty increase. Since Friday afternoon he has basically used the potty. He is a little slow after waking (morning and naps) but then after about 1/2 hour or so he does great again. He even used the potty at my dad's last night and today at church. He didn't have an accident at church at all. We were so proud of him. He is still in the "I have to remove every article of clothing when I go potty" phase so quite frequently we have a naked boy running around here. Right now he is in only his new Thomas the Train undies. I think it is just adorable. The girls, on the other hand, don't find it as cute as me. What greater gift could a mom receive that her son potty training himself? I can't think of one!

We also got to attend a seminar at our school this week and, once again, it was great! Dean Forman is the founder of our school and his mentor is Oliver DeMille. Oliver wrote the book A Thomas Jefferson Education and Dean based our school off of this book. Well Oliver DeMille came and spoke at the school. If you ever get a chance to go listen to him, GO. It was great. And it applied to everyone in the room. And it applied to every aspect of our lives. We came home motivated to be our best again. And do the best for our children. Loved, loved, loved it! This was greatly needed after my meltdown earlier in the week.

So that's our week ending with a great big Happy Birthday to me. Now I am off to eat Chocolate Lava Cakes! Yummy!

Motivating Mond . . . er, Tuesd. . . Man, is it Wednesday already?

Yes, I guess it is. Time is flying way too fast, that's all I can say.

Ok, I have been a little slow with my Motivating Monday posts but here we go for this week.

Every single second of every single minute of every single hour of every single day, we have a choice.

What are you choosing?

Spring Break Camping Trip

I have a very good excuse for not getting my "Motivating Monday" posts up - we were on vacation! Woo Hoo! With the kids out of school for Spring Break we couldn't just sit at home so we packed up and headed out of town. This time we decided to go at the beginning of the week which was so nice because we had the rest of the week to get caught up before jumping back into life. And today I officially got the last load of laundry started from the camping trip (it isn't officially dry and put away but it is washed). 

You might remember a few years ago we went up to Fort Bragg. Well that trip was rather rough with 2 flat tires, car sickness, a husband/wife disagreement, staying in the trashiest of all trailer parks and what else? I think I have blocked the rest from my memory. Anyways, it has taken us a few years to get brave enough to try Fort Bragg again but we did it! This time we stayed north of Fort Bragg at the Westport Beach KOA in Westport. The campground is right on the beach and it is a private beach so there was hardly anyone else on the beach. So awesome!

We arrived there Saturday afternoon. There was a huge group of "Elk Lodgers" or some group like that that were all there camping together. Some of them walked by and let us know that they were setting off lanterns in a little bit so we went to watch. It was pretty neat. They floated up until they burned out and then fell back to the ground. I asked Kurt if I was the lost princess, like in Tangled, but unfortunately I wasn't. No kingdom was suddenly mine. Oh well.

We were pleasantly surprised when most of the other campers packed up and left Sunday. It was pretty empty after everyone left so that was nice. 

On Sunday we drove to MacKerricher State Park. It is the only state park that is free! Bonus! We started out with finding this tree that the kids just couldn't stay out of. It was a pretty cool tree to play in.

Then we walked down this awesome boardwalk. It was beautiful! You walk out to a lookout point where you can watch the sea lions, if they are there, which they weren't but it was still pretty.

Just beautiful!

There is a beach that you can walk down to and explore. 

The kids had loads of fun finding treasures in the sand.

Our sweet little Hailey.

And our handsome Evan.

I absolutely love this picture of the boys. Big brother helping little brother but my favorite part is the shadow. I want to blow this up and put it in their room. So cute!

Me and T

The whole family

Our group on the boardwalk.

Then after we were done exploring the boardwalk we jumped on our bikes and rode down to Glass Beach. I think (meaning I can't remember the exact explanation for it) it is a section of beach where glass was washed up from a shipwreck and over the years the waves have smoothed all the edges of the glass making it a fun beach to explore. This is the path that we rode on. Beautiful views of the ocean the whole way.

We were told the path was only 2.5 miles but it ended up being more like 3, which makes a difference when you have 4 hungry kids and 2 hungry wives on bikes. Now I am not sure what any of us parents were thinking but we didn't pack a lunch so we got down to Glass Beach and we were all starving with no restaurants close by. So we did what any normal people would do. I called Round Table and asked if they would deliver to the corner of Glass Beach Drive and West Elm. And lucky for us they would. Although I had to convince them it wasn't that complicated and we paid a lot of pretty pennies for those pizzas but it was worth it, I think.

It was going to be 45 minutes until the pizza was delivered so we decided to go ahead and head down the path to Glass Beach and explore while we waited. Our pile of bikes:

Evan, Kurt and Hailey digging for glass. 

Everyone had their own approach as to what they were looking for.

I went after a variety of colors.

Kayla went for the green ones.

Then it was finally time for the dad's to go meet the delivery girl up at the gate so off they went.

Did anyone order pizza?

Lorraine and I enjoying our pizza. 

People would walk by and look at us and you could almost see the drool coming out of their mouths. We are thinking about starting a pizza company right there at Glass Beach. I'm sure we would make a fortune!

The girls playing in the sand.

Here we are all loaded up for the ride back.

Whew! We made it back to MacKerricher State Park!

 Kurt and Evan just relaxin'.

Pile up on dad!

At the entrance of the park there is a whale skeleton and you HAVE to take a picture with it. It's like a law or something =-)  We also went into the gift shop and saw a scrapbook of the actual whale that washed up on shore.

See us in the shadow?

We got back to camp and pretty much collapsed from our adventure that day. It was a lot of fun.

Monday we hung out and played at the beach at the campsite. There was an unexpected rain storm that afternoon but we were at the beach so what did we expect?

Cody had a blast too!

T shaking hands with a starfish!

It is really hard to see but in this one picture there were like 19 starfish. Amazing!

So that was our adventure for the beginning of Spring Break. What a great time!