Catch-up

It's been a little while since I've actually posted something other than pictures, and I apologize. It seems the only times I have put coherent thoughts together has been as I'm laying in bed, waiting to drift off to sleep. By that time, there's no way I'm going to get up and get on the computer.

These past two weeks have been very hectic and crazy for us. Matt spent the last two weeks in Daegu (about four hours south of us) at an Army base doing training. During that time, both boys and myself caught colds. Gabe had a fever and chills for 24 hours. Thankfully, it only lasted the 24 hours and not longer. Zander finished cutting his front two teeth and is now starting to cut the two side front teeth. He and I both still have sore throats, coughs and runny noses.

Gabe started his basketball clinics last Saturday and they will be every Saturday (starting Feb. 6) until mid March. There were 31 kids that signed up, so they split up the kids into two sessions of one hour each. It will be very exciting for all of us. Matt and I volunteered to help coach Gabe's session, but told the coach that we'd be willing to help with the other session too. I am excited to be helping other kids and for Gabe to see me in a different light than just Mom. At the first "practice", he was having a hard time throwing the ball up and catching it. His first response was to give up and start complaining about how he can't do it, really he just wanted my attention. When he saw that I was helping other kids and not there to focus only on him, he picked the ball right up and tried again and eventually got it. While I LOVE spending time with both my sons, having them home and teaching Gabe from home, I'm glad that we have this opportunity for him to be independent and not have me and Matt as a back up. I'm also so thankful that Matt was able to go with us to this past "practice" and hopefully all the Saturday's to come. It will definitely be interesting trying to teach the kids stretching and running drills with Zander in the front carrier. Also, I'm not sure how many pictures are going to be taken, as which ever parent is not "coaching" will be minding Zander. This is going to be a trial thing, I hope you all can understand.

Volunteering with the basketball clinics has also "forced" me to look at getting back in shape. As I was leading the 4 year olds in skipping around the cones at the last "practice", I was told by a sweet little girl that I needed to go faster because I was holding up the line. If I can't keep up in skips with a four year old, something's wrong. I still have the goal of running a 5K before we leave for the States. I was in pretty good shape before it started getting cold here, but as winter kicked in, I started slacking and now need to kick my own butt back into shape. I've now been doing at least a 1/2 hour of something everyday. Today was 1/2 hour weight-loss Yoga, yesterday was Jillian Michael's 30-Day Shred and 1/2 hour cardio. Gotta keep it up.

Also, Sunday Gabe and I were finally able to go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt. 1! Matt watched Zander and we took Paige (our friend from upstairs) to the theater on base. It was very good. Let me just say though that the people that sit in front of kids and then get frustrated that the kids talk and kick the chair in front of them and generally act like kids make me crazy. I purposely sat me and the kids away from everyone else, we didn't block anyone's view and were well out of earshot to the nearest person until someone decided to sit directly in front of us and then a group sat next to us. Both groups shot us glances every time one of the kids talked. ARGH!! I could rant about this topic forever. Other than that, the movie was fantastic. I'm not going to critique it in this post because it would be long and drawn out. If you want my opinions about it, just ask me or maybe I'll make a separate blog post about it. I was very proud of both kids for doing so well. It's a long movie, a long time to be sitting still. A lot of it is down time, character and plot building and not a lot of action. Both kids sat very well, ate their candy, drank their hot chocolate, and kicked the seats in front of them a couple times. Good times to be had by all. Except the losers that chose to show up late to the movie and then sit directly in front of and next to kids and then have the audacity to be pissed about it.

On the creative side, I've also been working on scrapbook pages. Now that I've got my workspace organized (in my own way at least), I've been able to get some ideas pumped out. For my best friend Krystal and her daughter Isabella, I've got three pages done, but still have plenty of ideas and inspirations. For my mom, she wanted note cards and thank you cards, and I have three completed for her as well. I will try and take pictures of them tomorrow to post. I'm pretty proud of myself. It's been awhile since I've been able to access the my artistic side and it feels good to get pages completed. I feel horrible for poor Zander, getting pages done for Isabella before him, but I am promising myself that I will get ones completed for him once we get to the states. Also, I'm trying to get ideas for Valentine's cards to make with pictures of the boys. I usually like to get holiday or themed shirts for them to wear for pictures, but I don't think it'll work out this year for V-Day. It's not like it's a great big holiday, I'm not really that torn up about it. And no stores really have anything that super this year anyway.

Gabe's birthday is starting to creep up on us too. It's a big year for us. Gabe turns 5 (gasp), I turn 27 (super gasp), Zander turns one (I'm in complete disbelief that it's only 4 months away) and Matt turns 28 (two years away from 30, eek!). Already I have mixed emotions about Gabe's birthday. I bought the vintage Star Wars cupcake decorations from Williams-Sonoma around Christmas time, both good guys and bad guys. If you ever get bored and love Star Wars, check out their stuff on Williams-Sonoma. I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty cool. If I could frost cookies like that, I would totally buy those cookie cutters, but I definitely do NOT have the patience to do that. We did the the pancake molds. And the Dark Vader spatula. It was a Star Wars-y Christmas. Pretty sweet. Tangent. Gabe's birthday. I'm trying to figure out if I want to mess with a big birthday party - invitations, figuring out a party place (definitely don't have a big enough place for lots of people), decorations, games, goody bags, food - or if we want to have a small get together with a couple friends over. I'm conflicted. This is the first real time that Gabe's had close friends and it'll be the last birthday for him here. But do I want to mess with all the planning and hassle while we'll still have basketball season going and t-ball getting ready to start as soon as basketball ends? Conflicted. I feel like we need to do this for him, to make his birthday special. At the same time though, I don't want him to think that he has to have a big party for the day to be special. I guess we'll see as time goes on and basketball season picks up.

Well, I'm glad I got a chance to catch up. Hopefully I will get some pictures of the boys taken this week, maybe videos too. Along with those, I want to get pictures of the scrapbook pages/cards posted and possibly pump out some more!

Genna, Matt and the boys