Happy Mother's Day

I love Mother's Day.  I love that it is in May when the world is awake and smells of flowers.  I love that it is warm.  I love that Mother's Day is on a Sunday when little tiny kids can sing to you in church and meetings are cancelled to let us enjoy our kiddos.

I love the garden stone that Aiden (and Aunt Kari) made me for Mother's Day.  I love whoever dropped off the beautiful planters on my doorstep while I was gone.

I love that missionaries call, hugs are given and Mom's everywhere can enjoy their little monkeys.  I love that I can go and see my own mother and put flowers on her grave and that it is beautiful where she is buried.

I love Mother's Day, but I love being a mother most of all.

Why I love work...

Okay.  So I don't really love work, but who does? But I think I like mine more than most.  I have a great job because, rather than being paid what industry standard says, I have negotiated to work from home 2 days a week.  SWEET job.

This morning, I took my computer outside to my patio and worked while it was nice and cool. 

This is the view from my office.

This is my favorite co-worker.

Love the working life.

No description necessary...

Thanks to our wonderful, wonderful photographer, Cherie Gailey.  

Life During Mom's Trip

This is a prime example of why I hate being away from Aiden.  He got into Breanna's mascara and I missed it.  He was clean and clear by the time I got home. 

Man, I missed my Monkey. 

Business Trip

Today I went on my first overnighter business trip since I gave birth to Aiden.  I have been able to sneak out of every other conference, but, alas, I had to go this time.  

I can't stand being away from Monkey.  It is miserable.  But I think it is really good for both of us... probably more for me than for Aiden.  I have this desire to be with Monkey every single minute of every single day.  So, here we are.

The nice thing about this trip is that the hotel is KILLER!  It is beautiful (see below...) staying at the Embassy Suites.  I am in a business suite with a living room, kitchen, and all the comfy bed one person could hope for.  

But... I am bored.  And lonely.  Mostly bored.  But pretty lonely.

Let's Give this a try...

So, there are many reasons why I am going to give this a try.  Money, time with my son, schedule, and many many more reasons.  But I am going to do Aiden's preschool in-home this year.

And, therefore, we transformed the third bedroom in our house to a multi-purpose room.  My trusty ol' treadmill is there, a spare bed is there, but it will also be our new little fun preschool room.  We will add shelves and other fun things, but I can't wait to get started.

I found a wonderful company that offers programs that are very specific to the child's needs.  For example, for most 3-year old kids, they work on capital letters.  I was able to specify that Aiden already knows upper and lower case letters, numbers to twenty... etc.  The package came this week and ... it is awesome!!!

Day 1 went great.  It was a trial run day to see time, ability and tasks that we will need.  Technically, our schedule will start May 1st, but I will be on a business trip that day, so we did that day's schedule today.

What did we do today?
We made a "Spring, Spring Tamborine", did a flower toss to celebrate spring, talked about baby animals and sorted toys by color.

We had fun and spent a lot of time together making it so fun!!!  Everyone cross your fingers...

Dinos

We go to the Dinosaur Park a lot.  Aiden loves it and it is close.  He is getting easier to take places like this because he is independent and loves to just get out and run. 

Well, he ran and ran, and biffed it.  He has skinned knees!  I was so proud.  He is usually so cautious about everything.  He actually was pretty brave about it.  He was the lucky recipient of bilateral Mickey Mouse Bandaids.