A Teachable Moment

A teachable moment, yes, that is what I stumbled upon yesterday.  

Telling your children the right thing to do is one thing.  Showing them the right thing to do through your actions is even better.  God gives us teachable moments and how we choose to use them is up to us.  I was fortunate enough to have one of these moments yesterday that I was able to use to help show my children what the "right thing to do" is.

Granted, this moment did not come at the most opportune time.  It came at a time when I could have easily given up, and said, "not today, God".  But I didn't.  Yes, the children were cranky and hungry and ready to go home.  I was finishing up errands at Target and putting my buggy away when I noticed the following items in the buggy in front of mine in the outdoor stall:

A coupon wallet, perhaps?

Yum, strawberry wafers!

Of course you can probably recognize that the first picture is of a ladies clutch purse.  When I saw it in the buggy it was partially opened with various receipts and coupons sticking out of it and because of the pattern and material, I thought it was a coupon organizer.  There was also this package of cookies.  What an odd combination of stuff to leave in your buggy I thought.  I announced to the boys to get back out of the car that we needed to go back inside Target to return these so that whoever lost them could hopefully come and claim them.  They weren't happy about it, but I explained we needed to do this so that we could help this person out.

I discovered that the thought-to-be-coupon-organizer was actually just a regular wallet with credit cards, money, and an NY drivers license inside.  I inquired at the customer service desk if they could take these items so that they could be claimed.  It was then that I started to put myself in the shoes of the woman that lost these items.  I wondered what would happen if she couldn't remember where she lost these items.  I asked what would happen if nobody claimed this wallet.  The Target person said that after 24 hours, the items are trashed.  Okay....now what should I do??

I decided to ask for the items back that I would find the owner myself.  I did leave my name and number with the Target desk incase the owner came their before I could track them down.  I could continue writing this story for many, many more paragraphs, but basically what it boiled down to is that I had to call in a favor from my former boss, a private investigator, to get a cell phone number to try and call the woman whose wallet I found.  I left a message with hopefully her husband stating I found a wallet and to please call me.  When I woke up this morning a very happy woman had left me a message  wanting to know where she could meet me to get her wallet back.

When I opened the door to meet her this morning she had flowers, a gift card, and a nice Thank You note for me.  Granted I did not do this for any "reward" but it was certainly nice of her.

It was a great lesson to teach my boys that we always try our best to do the right thing even when it's not the easiest or most convenient solution.

Such pretty Tulips!

Pay it forward!

I'm finally making good on a promise to myself to pay-it-forward!  I have made 3 gifts for some blog commentors and plan on delivering them soon.  I was able to drop off two of the three today.  One was for a new mommy, Megan.  She just had her second son 8 days ago and I was at her house dropping off a meal.  Hopefully it was good.  I made her "fiesta salad" which is one of my family's favs.

Seeing her new little guy made me realize that my baby is hardly a baby anymore :(

Brighton refused to be in the picture, and I wasn't going to push it.

Here's the cute gift I made:  I thought it turned out nice. 

Sorry Jen P, if you see this post before you pick it up from church.  I had hoped it would be a surprise!

Sickness, sickness...GO AWAY!

I've lost track of how many prescriptions my family has had filled this month.  It's way, way too many!  I've started a collection of the colored rings that Target puts on prescription bottles, a different color for each family member, in hopes that I can think of some creative craft to do with them.  We certainly have enough of them!  The infection that just won't leave our house has caused Maverick to need to use a nebulizer.  I'm trying to look on the bright side and remember that we are getting to do this at home, and not in the PICU at Wake Med (where our last experience with this was, with Brighton)

Still, this is no fun.  Not to mention that Maverick was also put on a steroid which is making sleep and naps almost near non-exsistant.  This too shall pass...

Moms of Girls...

Just a thought....a guess, perhaps.  Since I have yet to experience what it's like to have a little girl, I can only imagine.  Although I was a tomboy and never really liked Barbies and dolls, I'm thinking that moms of girls don't find those items in positions such as these:

This is Anakin Skywalker who was placed here and remained on the drawer in our kitchen for a few days.  Lovely decorating, isn't it?

Adventures with Elliot

Chandler was more than excited when the class elephant, Elliot got to come home with him on Friday of last week.  Elliot gets to stay with us for one whole week and we get the burden privilege of documenting his stay with us in pictures and writing up a summary of his stay with us to place in the class book.  Normally I would love this sort of assignment, but with the sick children and being sick myself, this task STILL remains in my to-do pile.  Someday....

Anyways, there are pictures of Elliot at Yogurt Mountain, playing firefighter, looking at the rain, and more...   Here are some highlights:

Chandler had an MRI at Duke Children's hospital today.  It was part of a research study and he loved it.  The above is a picture of the "practice" machine to get Chandler acquainted with how it would be and sound.  He did great!  He got to watch a movie while they took pictures of his brain.  We will have these mailed to us in a few weeks.  Chandler got to pick out two prizes for his great work and he was nice enough to share one with Brighton.  I'm so proud of him!

Here Elliot practices his architectural skills as he reviews plans for our new house.

Elliot and Chandler hanging out on the trampoline.

Here's the lincoln log farmhouse that Mommy Elliot built.

Over the weekend it was haircuts for the big boys.  Chandler decided Elliot needed a trim too.  We did have a fun time with all our adventures with Elliot and hopefully he had fun too!

Here we go again...

It seems like the renovation process was off to a good start and then came to a grinding halt when we realized there was a major problem in our plans.  Unfortunately, our architect had mis-calculated where our house sat on our property and the design we had settled on would not fit within the set back lines.

Back to square one.  We were more than frustrated.  The architect was frustrated.  Luckily we are back to heading in a good direction.  We now have two plans ("D" and "E") that we are making some tweaks to, getting a price from a contractor, and then we will make a decision from there.

Plan D

 The above plan, "D" is currently our favorite.  Although it will offer less square footage, it has a two-car garage.  We are hopeful that this plan can be in our budget.  We will be modifying this plan to rearrange the "mud/laundry" room configuration and also switching the location of the master bath and closet.  We are hoping to add a door from the master bath directly to the outside since we most often need the bathroom when we are swimming/hot-tubbing.

Plan E

Plan "E" is our plan without a garage.  It is more square footage, and has 5 bedrooms for our growing family.  This plan will be modified to make the "mud/laundry" room larger, and possibly moving the 1/2 bath.

We can't wait to see the tweaked versions and get some quotes to see which direction we end up heading.

Mr. Grump

Like I mentioned earlier, we are constantly (it seems) sick around here.  Chandler had a fever starting on Sunday of this week and Brighton started the fever on Thursday.  Today he stayed home from preschool. He's a little tougher than Chandler when it comes to being sick, but can still be quite the grump.  Notice the scab under his chin?  That's from a tumble at the indoor playground earlier this week.

Brighton enjoyed watching more than his fair share of cartoons today and also got to see a movie in the car.  If we ever move or add on to our house, we plan for the big boys to keep sharing a room, but maybe a larger one where we can un-bunk the beds.  I had been looking for some "sports-theme" bedding for some time now, but hadn't found any that I liked and was in our budget.  Thank you Craig's List!  I scored this bedding (two sets) for the boys today for about $100 and I was quite pleased.  They are from Pottery Barn Kids, and barely used.  

Now, if we can only get the renovation process underway we can actually use them!