Friday Follow 4/30/10

I didn't get to participate in Friday Follow last week and I missed it so much. I can't wait to hop around and find some great new blogs to follow.
Check out Hearts Make Families, One 2 Try, and Midday Escapades. Then link up and have some fun!

Oh my, it's been such a busy week. We had a softball game on Monday, Dakota's end-of-the-year party for Engineering club on Tuesday, a softball game on Wednesday, gymnastics on Thursday, and we have softball practice tonight. I am so ready for this weekend! Dakota has a birthday party to go to for a couple of hours on Sunday, but other than that, I think we are free. Hooray!

Welcome Friday Followers! Please leave me a comment and let me know you were here so I can come over and visit you.

Have a great, restful weekend!

Five Question Friday

It's time for Five Question Friday with Mama M.! Head on over there and join the fun.


1. If you could, would you go back to high school?
Nope. It was fun(ish) the first time around, but I wouldn't want to go back to that time in my life.

2. If a genie appeared and granted you two wishes, what would they be? (And, no saying "more wishes".)
Hmmmm...right now, I would wish for Daniel to find a really good job in McAlester and I would wish for the genie to do all my cleaning out/packing up of this house before we move.

3. What kids show do you secretly like?
One of my kids' favorite shows right now is the Zula Patrol.


Landon and Sierra will drop whatever they are doing when they hear the theme song (I just had to watch that video three times because Landon heard it playing in here). It really does teach them a lot about space, etc. Landon can tell you all about shadows and how they get longer/shorter. Cheyenne came home and said "My teacher asked what H2O means and I was the only one who knew." Of course, she learned it from the Zula Patrol. (Don't tell anyone, but I like it too.)

4. What is your beverage of choice?
5. What is something that you would change about yourself (or are working to change in yourself)?
My answers for questions 4 and 5 kind of go together.

Up until the last 3-4 weeks, I would have said without hesitation that Diet Pepsi was my drink of choice. I was hooked on them. But, not just any diet pepsi would do. It had to be a diet pepsi from the fountain at On Cue. I had to have at least one a day.
The thing about myself that I am working to change is my health (I used to say my weight, but I know a lot of people who are not overweight, but are not healthy, so that is my goal now instead). As a part of that, I have given up my Diet Pepsi habit. I haven't had one in almost 4 weeks. Hooray!
If you read my Post it Note Tuesday a couple of weeks ago, you know that in giving up my diet pepsi habit, I developed a new sweet tea habit (didn't help that McDonald's started their $1 drink deal around that time). Really not a better choice, I know. I am working on that one right now. I am down to about 2 sweet teas a week, so that's so not bad.

Happy Friday everyone! I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

It's softball season at the Harmon house!

Tomorrow is Cheyenne's first softball "practice" game! She is really excited and so am I. I have lots of memories of playing softball when I was Cheyenne's age and I love to watch her play. She is pretty good for a third grader and she plays her heart out. This afternoon she asked me if everyone was going to go to her game tomorrow night. I told her that I wasn't sure since it didn't start until 7:00 and it is on a school night. She said "If not, will YOU come and watch me?" Wow! I couldn't believe that "daddy's little girl" wanted her mom to come watch her first game! I'm sure I'll have tons of pictures to post tomorrow.

This afternoon, Cheyenne talked her daddy into going out and playing catch with her to get ready for the game. After a while, he went to work on mowing the lawn (hooray!) and left her out in the front yard pitching to herself. It took her a while to get the hang of it. She had a funny little pattern going on for a while-

toss the ball,
swing,
miss,
pull up pants,
pick up the ball...

-I was cracking up watching her from the kitchen window. Finally, she got the hang of it though.

She played by herself for a while, then she recruited Sierra to play with her. I looked out my window to see this.

Can't you just see her coaching her own kid's team someday. She'll be good at it.

As far as I know, this is the first time that Sierra has ever hit when the ball was pitched to her. How fun that it was her sister who did the pitching.
Landon was having fun blowing bubbles by himself and watching he girls for a while. Then he decided he wanted to have a turn.
He's left-handed (like his mom), so it took a little bit for them to figure out the logistics of how he was going to bat.
They finally got him all set. Coach Cheyenne gave him some pointers.
Landon was able to hit a few too! He was pretty excited! We didn't sign him up for t-ball this year, but I think he will definitely be ready for next year.
I just love it when my kids get along!

April 19, 1995

The ladies over at RHOK have a MckLinky up today for you to link up your memories of where you were when the Oklahoma City Bombing occurred. If you have a memory of that day, head over there and link it up.

I remember this day pretty well. I was a junior in high school. I was in my second hour class, Mr. Horn's World History class, getting ready to begin. The first word that we got was that the State Capitol building had been bombed. Our class went into a kind of panic because one of our classmates was serving as a page at the Capitol that day. It took a while before we found out the truth and even longer before we got word that he was okay.

All of our classrooms had televisions in them that we used to watch a daily news program that came on at the beginning of every class period. Most of the teachers let us watch the news coverage that day. It was so sad.

I remember going home after school for several days after and watching the rescue efforts. Watching the rescue workers pull toys from the wreckage was heartbreaking and I can remember sitting in front of the television and crying. It was a terrible day.

I remember going to OKC while the fence was still up and seeing all the things that people left there. The sight of it was overwhelming. So many people had lost someone they loved!

We have gone a few times to the memorial. It's beautiful, especially at night when the chairs are lit. We've taken the kids to see it and the older two were old enough to understand why that place is so special. Dakota and Cheyenne have even participated in the Memorial Marathon kids event.

Now that Sierra and Landon are older, we will take them back sometime soon and tell them the story as well.

Mama Guilt Monday

It's time for another edition of Mama Guilt Monday with Cop Mama. Head on over to her blog to read what others had to say about their Mama Guilt today and link up a post of your own.

This week's prompt is:

Balancing Blogging & Being a Mom

I have been struggling with this lately. Trying to find the time to read the blogs I follow, enter giveaways, leave comments on other blogs, write posts, load pictures, link up on blog hops...while still being there for my kids is tricky. It's especially hard during the day when the girls are at school and it's just Landon and I at home. Landon is content to sit in front of the computer or TV as long as I'll let him and entertain himself. If I'm not careful, I'll sit down to work on a blog post or catch up on my reading and before I know it, and hour has past or even longer. I feel really guilty then that Landon has been with the electronic babysitter all that time.

I've tried staying up later after the kids have gone to bed and getting my posts for the next day ready so that all I have to do is link them up the next day. By the end of the day, though, I am too tired to put together a coherent thought most days. So, my new goal is to get up early and get the posts ready for the day. Then, when the linkys appear, I will be ready to go. I used to get up at 4:00am when I was working and I really got a lot accomplished during the time before everyone else got up. It's much easier for me with no distractions. I started last week, setting my alarm for 6:00am instead of 6:15. If nothing else, it helped my attitude a lot to start the day with a few minutes to myself.

This week, I am going to set the alarm for 5:45am. I can use that time to catch up on e-mail and blog reading before the kids get up. If I can't get a post written during that time, I can at least get a start on ideas going so it won't take so long when I do sit down to write.

Another thing that I am going to do this week is to go back to eating lunch at the table with Landon. He always asks if he can eat in the living room and watch TV. Lately, I've been letting him because 1)he eats more when he's watching TV (he takes meds for ADHD which affect his appetite, so I will do anything to get him to eat something). 2)he is usually finished eating his lunch by the time I get mine made and then I end up eating at the table by myself anyway. 3) If he's occupied, I have time to work on blog stuff. My goal for this week is to eat lunch at the table together at least 3 days.

I can't wait to read how other moms handle balancing between blogging and kids! I know I'm going to get some great ideas!

Five Question Friday 4/16

Hooray for Friday! That means that all the kids will be home tomorrow. No rushing around to get everyone out the door. No hour spent driving and dropping kids at school. I can't wait. My kids only have 28 more school days left! I can't wait for summer!

Here are this week's questions from the lovely (and very funny) Mama M. Head over to her blog if you want to link up or read what other people said.

1. What words do you use on your blog/online that you don't use in real life?

Okay, seem to use the word "totally" A LOT on my blog. I don't think I ever say that in real life. I catch myself doing it and think "did I really just type that?" but I never go back and change it.

2. Do you still write checks?

Yep. I am the world's worst about not keeping up with my debit card. I hate to carry a purse, so sometimes I just slip it into my pants pocket when I go in somewhere. Then when I get home, I take it out and set it on the bar or dresser and forget to pick it up the next time I go somewhere. Sometimes (like right now) I am not real sure where I put it in the house. So, I get stuck writing checks a lot or going to the bank and taking out cash if I'm going somewhere that won't take a check. Which reminds me, I need to put "find debit card" at the top of my to-do list for tomorrow. The girls will all be home so they can help me look.

3. Who was your favorite President and why?

I'm not really into politics/history.I don't know that I could give an informed answer on this one. I will say that I am not a big fan of our current President nor of Bill Clinton, but I think they all have had their pros and cons.

4. Are you a yeller?

Unfortunately, I am sometimes. I try to be conscious of it but sometimes I do it anyway. I know it doesn't work, so I am trying to be better.

5. Have you ever dumpster dived?

I am pretty sure that I personally have never dumpster dived. I do, however, have things that have been obtained through someone else's dumpster diving-namely, my husband. I used to have a thing about "used" things like Mama M. says she does, but after many years of living with my garbage truck driving husband (I don't think I've blogged about that yet, I'll have to remember to do it sometime) I have learned how the kinds of great stuff you can find. Especially because we live in a college town and every December and May there are lots of things thrown out simply because the people don't want to bother moving them. (Our kitchen table for one. It's ugly, but sturdy and will be beautiful if I ever get around to refinishing it. Also our dog, Bacon. Someone tied him to a garbage bag and put him out on the curb.)

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Friday Follow

Hosted by Hearts Make Families, One 2 Try, and Midday Escapades. Check them out and link up.

Welcome new Friday Followers! Please leave me a comment and let me know you were here and I'll comment back. If you follow me, I will follow you too. This is so much fun! I've found lots of great new blogs to follow.


If you want to know more about me, check out my post for the UBP.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. We are going to have a pretty easy Saturday. Nothing on the agenda yet except a little cleaning and laundry. Sunday will be busy though. Grandma Debbie will be visiting and we are going to have a birthday party for Dakota at the YMCA pool. It should be lots of fun and I'm sure I'll have plenty of pictures to share next week.

Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy your Friday!

stART-Goldilocks and The Three Bears

I had a much more "artsy" activity planned for this week, but we just didn't get it done. Today is Dakota's birthday and it kind of threw my schedule off a bit. So, I'm going to post about what we did yesterday instead. It's more craft than art, but it turned out pretty cute and Landon had a good time making it.

We started out by reading this book:

I found this book on the new shelf at the library the other day. I think the illustrations are very nice. The thing I like best about it, though, is that the story is told very simply and there aren't a lot of words on each page. Sometimes the older folktale books are really long and don't hold Landon's attention. He loved this one though. It was "just right." :)

For our project, we made a bear mask. I had Landon paint a paper plate brown for the main part of the mask. While we waited for the paint to dry, we played with the Lego Education set that I got in the mail on Tuesday. Landon had lots of fun with it! These were the small legos so they were great for building his fine motor skills.

He made some diving boards and used the other pieces to be the people jumping off!
Once he had enough of the legos, we started constructing our bear. Landon loves googly eyes, so we had to put some of those on. He picked them up and said "Hey, mom! These are squoooooooshy!"
Next, I had him cut out one brown circle and one pink circle for the ear ( traced them for him) and also the nose. I cut out the other ear. We glued those to the top.
Then, I cut a mouth. Landon told me that he wanted a happy mouth for his bear, but when he glued it on he put it upside down like a frown. He said the bear was mad because someone ate his "pouwige" (porridge).
Here's the finished product once it dried-modeled by Cheyenne.

Landon was still in the mood for cutting and gluing once his bear was finished. I saw the grocery store ads sitting on the table with the newspapers, so I thought we would make a collage. Landon said he didn't think he would like porridge for breakfast, so I asked him to look at the ads and find things he would like to have for breakfast. We took turns cutting things out and he glued the ones he liked best on another paper plate.
I'm still not sure whether he actually wanted to pork and beans for breakfast or if he was just to busy cut it apart from the juice picture. :)
Once that was finished, he wanted to play with shaving cream. I thought it would be a good activity to keep him busy while I worked on lunch, so I let him. He had fun getting messy with it, but the part he liked best was washing it off the table. Weird kid, I know!


And just because, here is a game that Landon and I made when we read WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. It's played pretty much like CANDYLAND, except with letters. We are working on the names of lower case letters, so that's what I used. It was fun!

I can't wait to hop around and see everyone else's stART projects for this week!

Wednesday's Walk-Happy Birthday Dakota

I'm a little late linking up my Wednesday's Walk this week. So glad Jenilee left the linky open so I could still join in!

In just about 2 hours, my oldest daughter, Dakota, will be 12 years old! I can't believe it! One more year and I will have a teenager in the house! I don't know if I am prepared for that. So, today's Wednesday's (or in my case Thursday's) Walk down memory lane is dedicated to Dakota.

(Dakota was born before we had a digital camera and I don't have a scanner, so you'll have to suffer through with pictures of pictures today.)

Here's our first picture of Dakota.

Here is a picture of me just a few days before Dakota was born.

I had gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia. I was swollen from head to toe. See those lovely shoes? I got to wear those because the strap was adjustable so I could actually get my feet into them. Lovely, huh?

Here's Daniel showing off his "baby belly". Ha!
And here's a picture of the two of us together. You can sure see how young we are in this picture!

I was scheduled to be induced on Thursday morning, the 16th, but Dakota had other plans. Around 11ish on the night of the 14th, I got up to use the restroom and my water broke. I started getting things ready and told Daniel he needed to wake up. Daniel isn't very much fun to wake up, and this time was no exception. He growled something at me about getting up in 5 minutes. I continued getting ready to go and suddenly he came bursting out of the bedroom. Apparently, he woke up enough to realize that Seinfeld was on TV (which comes on around 11 here) and it was still night. He realized what was going on then and went into panicked new dad mode. :)

Daniel drove like crazy (nothing really out of the ordinary for him-hahaha!) and we arrived at the hospital around midnight. The nurses got us all settled in and we watched some television and waited.

I don't remember very much about the rest of the labor. I do remember that as it went on and became more uncomfortable, I was getting really irritated with having so many people trying to talk to me, etc. I had planned on trying to make it without an epidural, but my blood pressure was up and the nurses/doctor recommended one to help me to relax. I am SO glad I listened. Once I got my epidural, I was pretty happy to visit with everyone. I felt so much better.

I always joke with ladies who are getting close to their due dates that the way to get your baby to come is to make sure your house is a mess. Leave your dishes in the sink, don't vacuum, let your laundry stay scattered on the floor. It worked for us twice! :) The nurses assured Daniel the we had HOURS to go before Dakota would arrive, so he made a run for home to load the dishwasher and straighten things up a bit (and I think take a nap). Turns out, we didn't have quite as long as they thought. He nearly missed it. He was in the drive-thru at McDonald's when someone called him to get back there quick. Thankfully, he made it just in time.
Back then, our hospital still moved you from the labor room to the delivery room and the dad had to dress in scrubs to come in. Somewhere in the midst of getting ready to go into the labor room, someone asked me for permission to have some nursing students come into the room with me because they had never seen a birth. That epidural really had a big effect on me, because I agreed. (don't know what I was thinking) So, Dakota had quite an audience with the doctor, nurses, Daniel, and several nursing students looking on.

Dakota was born at 1:08pm on Wednesday, April 15, 1998. She weighed 7lbs 14oz and was 21 inches long. I had never seen a more beautiful baby.

Look at those adorable little footprints!

Here she is!

What a sweet baby!

I have lots more pictures of Dakota from the hospital, but I found these two in her baby book and I had to include them. She was Pawpaw's girl from the beginning. Wish he could be here for her birthday today! I know she misses him a lot.

Happy Birthday Dakota! I hope you have a good one!

Spinning

Sierra: "Hey Landon, let's spin around and around and see how long we can stay up!"

Yep, about that long.

Wordless Wednesday-SPLASH!

If you would like to see more Wordless Wednesday posts or link up your own, visit 5 minutes for mom.