Sharing My Jennarocity

"For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten son. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life."   John 3:16  

Jason got the kids early yesterday for Easter weekend. We gave Jordan his new birthday bike, and we were all out in the front yard playing, when Jordan came up to me. "Can I tell her, Dad?" he asked Jason. "Sure," Jason replied.   "We watched the video at school today." he told me.   "Which video?" I said, naively.   " The video." He asserted. "You know, the ones that boys and girls watch."   "OOhhhh." I said. Was I ready for this? I looked at Jason and thought, 'Surely he isn't old enough for this yet!'   "What did you think?" I asked him.   "It was gross! Especially the part about the girls." he told me.   Pretty soon, he isn't going to think it's gross. Pretty soon, things around this house are going to be different. I wasn't raised with any brothers, so this is all new territory for me. Thank goodness Jason is here to answer questions and t...

Today is our 3rd anniversary...     What a great 3 years it's been!   This weekend, we had a kid-free weekend. We went to the Mavs game Friday night - a first for us - and it was great fun. We even took the train out to Dallas and that was well worth it, to not have to park and deal with traffic.   Jason was in hog heaven. I was so glad to see him do something he truly enjoys. It doesn't hurt that this month is also March Madness. He is a basketball player and loves to watch it, so right now, he is truly enjoying life. :-)   What is the secret to a good marriage? There are so many ways I could answer that question. But the one thing I will tell you is that the first thing you have to do is to marry the right person in the first place. When I was single, I had all of these ideas of the "perfect guy" or what my life would be like with the perfect guy. How I would feel about the perfect guy, the kinds of things he would say, stuff...

Kelly's Korner is doing a series called "Build Em' Up," meant to encourage moms throughout this journey of motherhood. Today, her post was about playing with her kids , so I thought I would participate.   Many of the moms I'd read about said they didn't play with their kids enough because of all of the things they felt they had to do around the house. I usually don't ever have that problem (I honestly could care less if there is laundry to do, it doesn't eat me up inside like many other moms out there), so that's not why I have trouble playing with the kids.   As you get older, I think your imagination becomes a little more limited than that of a 3 year old. I find it difficult to actually play with the kids and imagine with them. Not only that, but each age and sex of a child comes with different types of play. With Jordan, he used to always want to play Legos, but now, it's Nerf Wars. I am not a boyish-player, so that's always...

Oh, Walking Dead . I love this show so much.   Before I review this episode, let me just tell you why I love this show as much as I do, especially for those who have never watched this show. I am seriously the most impatient and judgmental TV drama-show watcher there is. I get annoyed with characters very easily, I get itchy for story lines to  end that do not have immediate conclusions, I hate shows with completely unviable and unrealistic plot lines, and I can only watch a show so long that takes too many episodes to conclude a mystery. Examples of shows I attempted to watch but either A) got annoyed with the length of the story arch, B) got annoyed with a character or C) got annoyed with unrealistic situations, would be: Homeland, Prison Break, Breaking Bad , and Lost . I know, all very popular shows. But I am telling you. It takes a show to be very good for me to be addicted to it. Now, comedies, I will watch all day long. One hour cop dramas, like Law and O...

This is my 4th birthday to spend with the kids, I just can't believe they are getting this old!!   Sophia turns 8 on Sunday, but we don't have the kids this weekend, and so we decided to do her birthday dinner last night. (We have the arrangement that every other year, we throw the kids birthday party with their friends from school, so this year, it was just us.)   We have been wanting to get the kids bikes since we moved into a house, but we decided this year was a good time. So, she got a new bike! She was so excited.   This is the infamouse "Cupid Shuffle and throwing tickets" I talked about yesterday.          I couldn't help but be sad - they don't even have a real thing to "whack" anymore. You know how it could be a mole, or an alligator and you have those big cushy things you hit them with? Now, it's all virtual. You just hit the TV.     Avery was a little more into the games this time arou...

How I hate Chuck E Cheese.   The only person who asks me to go here is Sophia. And I always say, non-hesitantly, "No." Except for once a year. On her birthday. And today, I pay the piper.   I hate this over-priced, under-delivered, dirty, screamy, loud, worthless place. I do. I would rather just pay $5 for a Little Caesars pizza, shine a bright blinking light in my childrens face for 2 hours, tell them to go run around the house 45 times, then give them a piece of plastic I found on the street as a "prize" then to spend $50 of my hard earned money to do the exact same thing in a confined space with other children.   My favorite part, oh Chuck E, is when you make the children follow you around for 20 minutes every hour to "Cupid Shuffle," then shower them with tickets that they fight over, including the hovering mothers, for prizes that aren't worth the gum on the bottom of my shoe.   How I dread March 24 every year.   But in our...

 As with many times in church, last night, I was convicted.   We talked about "What is God's Plan for My Life?" You know, the questions you ask yourself ( like I did Monday , remember?) like, What should I do for a living? Apparently, God isn't so concerned with what you do. He is concerned with who you are. In the Trek book, it was talking about how we struggle alot with what we think we should do with our lives. We worry about it. It asked us to write down everything we could remember that we thought about that day. It then asked, how many times did you think about what God wants for you, or being a follower of Christ? I am ashamed to say, it's less than I'd like to admit.   I often drift into daydreaming or focusing on plans for our lives. What job we should take, what we should spend money on, how to raise our kids. Unfortunately, all too often those are all byproducts of a life that isn't being led my Christ and being the person He wants to...

This week was really eye opening for me, with the kids, especially Sophia. One of the more disturbing situations for us was internet safety. I read this article this morning on Empowering Parents and it scared me because of what we found out this week.   As you all know from previous posts on electronic games and items for kids, that I am not a huge fan of them. Especially ones that allow children access on to the internet, and especially ones that are interactive. We have one computer in the house and it sits in our "office," which is our breakfast area that has no doors and is in the middle of the house. Anyone can see what you are doing on the computer, and we will be keeping it that way. We don't discourage the kids from getting on it, but they are really only allowed to play on it for one hour a day, that's it. They spend enough time on it during the week at school for education benefits, and I guarantee you Sophia is not going on our computer to do someth...

I happened upon this blog while I was internet surfing. The actual article was about this man, with brain cancer, who ran a marathon with his 6 year old daughter in a stroller. The article linked to this particular post about the actual race from his blog "Picking Up A Hitchhiker."   After I read the intitial blog post, I realized that this man wasn't highly skilled writer, but he was an incredibly honest writer. I wanted to know more about him and his journey of cancer, and his blog started at the very beginning. Post after post, I read of this man, who has a very dry, good sense of humor, with his flaws, who received the diagnosis of brain cancer and his fight to reconcile it with himself. During this process, he also lost his job as a juvenile worker of troubled youth (due to his medications, not job performance). He lost the ability to drive a car. He also lost his marriage.   I encourage you to read it. The doctor's told him that he was in the best shap...

I got this picture from Jenn, the lady who watches Avery...   She has all girls, yet these girls love to dress up in boys costumes.They all had capes and she said they were being superheroes. SO cute.   I've been giving alot of thought lately to my life and what I am truly passionate about. I feel as though my lack of passion in something is what is missing from my life. I try to be passionate for many things, like working and weight loss, church activities, or reading. But you can't fake passion. While those things are important and things I need to enjoy, they are not my passion, which means, I won't do them well at all.   How do you know what your passion is? That's a hard question. According to Wikipedia , passion is defined as: " Passion (from the Ancient Greek verb πάσχω (paskho) meaning to suffer) is a term applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire fo...

This weekend, we were a host home for Disciple Now. We had the high school boys, so I wasn't super involved in small group and free time at our house, but I was able to participate in their afternoon activity and worship time on Saturday night. (For those parents of the boys who are reading this, they were ALL WONDERFUL, very mannerly, and kind to the kids! I have no idea if they were loud, we have a large house and I couldn't hear a peep, but I don't know if that's good insulation or kids who went to bed early. I am thinking it's the insulation - although it's proof to me that I will host again!)   This is what they spent pretty much all free time doing at our house. Robert and Shari got that for us for Christmas, and BOY has it gotten its money's worth!       They put together bags for homeless children on Saturday...     And here is the youth group!       The man that spoke, Chad, talked to the kids o...

As parents who only get partial visitation, we always struggle with effective punishments for bad behavior when we only have kids who are with us first, third and fifth weekends every month. When we have the kids for a week, like this one for Spring Break, it becomes harder and more challenging. We are kind of at a loss, and have been for the three years we've been together.   With each kid so far, 7 really begins the age where kids start to become more set in their ways and their personalities. You start to get more and more frustrated when they make bad choices. Eight is the age that we both feel kids can really start becoming accountable for bad behavior. Not so much stuff like, you aren't cleaning your room or helping with chores. It's stuff like, "You are old enough to understand that what you just said is hurtful." And you start to be more disappointed with things they say and do because you feel like they know better, and are purposely doing things tha...

One thing working moms miss out on is playdates. I just have never had one, especially not one during the weekdays. And Jordan and Sophia have never really had friends over at our house, since all of their friends live in Flower Mound. Well, we are glad we are a part of a church with people we are becoming friends with and with kids their age. Today, we had our first playdate! Tomorrow, it will be Jordan's turn to have a friend over (although at their age, I don't think 11 year olds have "playdates" especially boys. They are having Nerf wars and I am hiding in my room with the younger girls for shelter!)   Ester and Marco are 7 and 4, and so they are good ages for Avery and Sophia. Here is Marco cleaning the floor in the playroom (I put all kids who come to my house to work, ha ha!)     And Sophia finally got someone who can play with her nice dolls, so they were combing their hair.     And I also took the kids to McDs today, and of course, w...

This weekend really was about Jordan...on Friday night, Jordan's soccer team coach worked it out to where his team would lead the high school varsity's scocer team out on the field on their game!    I heard on the radio about CSI Day for kids at the 6th Floor Museum in Dallas for kids. I haven't ever been to the 6th Floor Museum in 33 years, so I was pretty excited about taking Jordan. I have to say, this was a cool event. They had the entire 7th floor set up completely, with a crime scene, forensic stations, eyewitness accounts, and video surveillance footage. And everyone that worked the stations was so happy to answer your questions and never once did they act annoyed that we kept asking the same questions over and over. The whole point was to solve a crime. When you got there, they gave the kids a clipboard and papers with an explanation of the crime and questions to ask in each station. An ambassador had died and you had to figure out who killed ...

Who has two thumbs and forgot about the kids' open house last night? This girl!   I haven't been good about keeping a calendar and it's getting to the point where we have so much going on, that's a requirement. So, we have a car in the shop, I took the train home from work, and Jason had to go pick up all three kids. And halfway home, they say, "Aren't we going to open house?" Crud, we both thought. We knew about this, their mom told us, and we completely forgot. So he drove all the way to Irving to pick me up at the train station, then we had to turn around and go back to Flower Mound. Ugh. But, it was worth it. I love seeing the things the kids have done at school!   They always surprise me because they are asked to do things at school that involve them writing about their families. I always forget that I am one of their "parents" and so when I see my name listed as their step-mom in one of their projects and how much they love me, it...

I always do the girls' hair. But Jason has informed me that before me, he could put Sophia's hair in a mean ponytail, and said once Avery's hair was long enough, he would do the same for her. This morning I was getting ready, so he did Avery's hair. It was too cute not to take a picture of.   I couldn't help but think that not all girls in the world know what it's like to have a dad that would lovingly do their hair, or play with them, or do voices for them, or play dress up for them, or wrestle with them, or bathe them. And a part of me got sad for all of those girls who won't know what that's like. I am so blessed to have a wonderful father for my baby girl, and I hope she always knows how lucky she is to have a daddy who loves her so much.   

Jason swears our house was designed before it's time. There are so many intricate details of this house that are so unique and they are really starting to grow on me.   For one, there is this...     And it was featured on House of Fifty today! Did you know it was called a wheat chandelier? I did NOT.     That is pretty cool, if you ask me!

 Brooke posted this...     Which reminded me that I had to post this.     Ah, Sesame Street.

Avery always woken up in the morning, come in our room, and had breakfast in our bed, and has since she was a baby.         Little spoiled stinker, this one is. But I love her!