I am a full time working mom. I wake up at 5:30 most mornings, get ready for the day, go to work 'til midafternoon and continue my role as a mom and wife. It is not easy. I don't have time for many things, one of those unfortunately is time for friendships. It is something that I have struggled with for a long time. When I am actually home from work, I choose to spend my time with my husband and my son. I am 100% okay with that. I am perfectly okay with staying at home with my family. I don't need to go out with girlfriends. I don't need to occupy myself with groups of moms with little ones. I don't need to meet up with friends. I am happy coming home to a toy-filled house to make dinner for my family and relax (ha! when do I ever relax) while watching One Tree Hill with Grant. I am okay with that!
I have recently learned a little bit about myself that has startled me...just a little bit. I am not really 100% "okay" with all that. I see so many friends online with all their girlfriends. I go to church and most moms all chitchat in the halls with their kiddos. I go to church and sit by myself because I am "okay" with that, but really I am not "okay" with that. I don't have a lot to relate to these woman. Most of these woman are almost or at their thirties. Their husbands have college degrees and good enough jobs that they get to stay home with their kiddos and not work. It's normal to not shower 'til noon. Most women take their kids to the park or pack a sack lunch to enjoy outside. Most get together with other moms and take day trips with their kiddos. I don't get that right now in my life, and although I am "okay" with that, I am not really "okay" with that. I would love to get together with other moms and talk about what is stressing me out in life, laugh at silly things my kids did, cry with them about worries we have....but I don't.
When other husbands were on church missions and in college, my husband was in the United States Army fighting for our country. When other husbands were interning at some corporate office, my husband was in Iraq hoping he would make it home. Yes, we are both 26. You would think that our lives would be on the mend of starting to all even out and calm down with the "standard" of what life would be like. I have been working to help with our family. Grant is starting a new job next week (Heavenly Father, you are so good to us!). Other factors have come into our lives to help us be where we are right now and for that, I am "okay" with being a stay at home while I watch other moms get to stay at home. I will get my time. I am "okay" with my family being my rock and sometimes slippery stone, but without my family I would not be who I am today. I know that even though I don't have what all those other moms have, I am important in this world but most importantly as a mom and wife. As a working mom, I have a stronger sense of purpose. My role as being a mom is not any better or worse for being a working mom. It is not any better or any worse because I wasn't able to do all those things with Hutson. I am so grateful for my husband! I am grateful that he is my best friend and the one that makes me "okay" with staying home when I get off work.
*Now please don't get me wrong here. I am not asking for any sympathy. I am bearing my heart out to the fact that lifestyles are different. Our desires and wants are all different, but in the end we are all trying to make it work for ourselves and our families.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Christmas in Nebraska
Before we left for our week long Christmas adventure in freezing Nebraska, we did a few things around the local area. Last year Hutson was only a month old so it was fun to introduce him to the Christmas festivities and start some of our Christmas traditions.
Grant's Aunt Nancy lives up near Omaha, NE. Her kids and all the Joyner's joined together for a memorable week of Christmas. My in laws have a 40 ft RV that we were going to drive up in, but decided due to the unknown with the weather that we would end up driving up there and stay in a hotel for the week. We (mostly me) were worried what it would be like driving ten hours with a one year old. With numerous requests for advice and prayers, Hutson did very well! On the drive there he slept most the morning and ended up watching Despicable Me about three times while in and out of a couple cat naps. I was totally ANTI entertaining my children with technology, but desperate times come for desperate measures and it worked out great! I also was panicking because Hutson (mostly myself) are on a schedule. We have a certain way to do mornings and an even more certain way we do bedtime. How was I going to do this while sharing a hotel room with four other people and not actually get back to the hotel for three or more hours after his normal bedtime?! I just had to go with the flow and considering there were three other cousins for Hutson to play with, there was no way he would have allowed bedtime to have been around the normal 7:30pm. I learned to let it go, and was blessed when we returned from a crazy week with Hutson stepping right back into his routine (for the most part).
It was really nice to spend time with Grant's family whom we don't get to see too often. I come from a family where holidays mean time in the kitchen telling stories, making food, and eating way too many sweets. It was so nice to have just that. Most of the week was spent talking with one another, watching Christmas movies, and eating way too much delicious food.
Christmas is always different for me considering Grant's family does Christmas so much different than I grew up with (I'm sure I'm not the only one that married into different traditions). We would always get new pajamas Christmas Eve. We read the nativity story out of the Bible and go to bed. The first person up Christmas morning has to wake up everyone else. Once everyone is awake we go to the family room where all the presents are and separate presents amongst ourselves. We open our presents. The middle of the room is a mess with ribbon, bags, wrapping paper all over the place. We show off our presents, eat our traditional breakfast casserole, and spend the rest of the day with one another until Christmas dinner. All of our Christmas morning pictures show us with crazy bedhead hair and groggy faces. Grant's family always gets up for the day, gets dressed, has their traditional breakfast, separates presents amongst themselves, then goes in a circle opening one present at a time. Its a much longer celebration, but it is nice to have another way of Christmas celebration.
This year for Christmas was nothing less of a crazy hectic Christmas day with things never going the way they were planned, but lots of memories made. Brunch was planned for 10am, but of course we didn't end up eating 'til 11. It was their traditional eggs with shrimp sauce, grits and cheese, with delicious muffins (a Joyner tradition). The opening of presents didn't start 'til around 1 or so. It was so much fun opening presents with so much family around. It was quite an event considering there were so many presents to open. This year I decided to do homemade gifts considering we were really tight on money. I noticed this time around, I was so much more anxious for everyone else to open their presents than I was to open mine. I was blessed with great in laws who always know me so well when it comes to gifts (a brand new KitchenAid mixer!!!), and a husband who buys me exactly what I want each year (a bigger Coach bag so I can forgo the monster diaper bag).
The day after Christmas we went to the Omaha zoo, which was incredibly impressive. It was so nice to spend the week with family. It is such a blessing to have married into such great people who are so Christ-like in their love for family and making time for one another. No one is perfect, we each have our flaws, but it is nice to come together.
We went to downtown McKinney.
Everyone has to have their screaming Santa picture, Hutson included.
Of course, he wasn't scared of mean 'ole green Grinch. That's our Hutson for ya.
All dressed up at our ward Christmas party.
Grant's Aunt Nancy lives up near Omaha, NE. Her kids and all the Joyner's joined together for a memorable week of Christmas. My in laws have a 40 ft RV that we were going to drive up in, but decided due to the unknown with the weather that we would end up driving up there and stay in a hotel for the week. We (mostly me) were worried what it would be like driving ten hours with a one year old. With numerous requests for advice and prayers, Hutson did very well! On the drive there he slept most the morning and ended up watching Despicable Me about three times while in and out of a couple cat naps. I was totally ANTI entertaining my children with technology, but desperate times come for desperate measures and it worked out great! I also was panicking because Hutson (mostly myself) are on a schedule. We have a certain way to do mornings and an even more certain way we do bedtime. How was I going to do this while sharing a hotel room with four other people and not actually get back to the hotel for three or more hours after his normal bedtime?! I just had to go with the flow and considering there were three other cousins for Hutson to play with, there was no way he would have allowed bedtime to have been around the normal 7:30pm. I learned to let it go, and was blessed when we returned from a crazy week with Hutson stepping right back into his routine (for the most part).
It was really nice to spend time with Grant's family whom we don't get to see too often. I come from a family where holidays mean time in the kitchen telling stories, making food, and eating way too many sweets. It was so nice to have just that. Most of the week was spent talking with one another, watching Christmas movies, and eating way too much delicious food.
Christmas is always different for me considering Grant's family does Christmas so much different than I grew up with (I'm sure I'm not the only one that married into different traditions). We would always get new pajamas Christmas Eve. We read the nativity story out of the Bible and go to bed. The first person up Christmas morning has to wake up everyone else. Once everyone is awake we go to the family room where all the presents are and separate presents amongst ourselves. We open our presents. The middle of the room is a mess with ribbon, bags, wrapping paper all over the place. We show off our presents, eat our traditional breakfast casserole, and spend the rest of the day with one another until Christmas dinner. All of our Christmas morning pictures show us with crazy bedhead hair and groggy faces. Grant's family always gets up for the day, gets dressed, has their traditional breakfast, separates presents amongst themselves, then goes in a circle opening one present at a time. Its a much longer celebration, but it is nice to have another way of Christmas celebration.
This year for Christmas was nothing less of a crazy hectic Christmas day with things never going the way they were planned, but lots of memories made. Brunch was planned for 10am, but of course we didn't end up eating 'til 11. It was their traditional eggs with shrimp sauce, grits and cheese, with delicious muffins (a Joyner tradition). The opening of presents didn't start 'til around 1 or so. It was so much fun opening presents with so much family around. It was quite an event considering there were so many presents to open. This year I decided to do homemade gifts considering we were really tight on money. I noticed this time around, I was so much more anxious for everyone else to open their presents than I was to open mine. I was blessed with great in laws who always know me so well when it comes to gifts (a brand new KitchenAid mixer!!!), and a husband who buys me exactly what I want each year (a bigger Coach bag so I can forgo the monster diaper bag).
It was such a blessing to have a week off work to spend wit this handsome boy.
Hutson loved playing with other kids.
Hutson's First Birthday
At Christmas I was kindly reminded (cough, Aunt Nancy, cough, cough!) that I haven't updated this blog in quite some time. The baby is in bed, the husband is at his cousin's house, and the house is cleaned from the crazy day we had; therefore, its time to blog!
Our big boy turned one towards the end of last year. I am so blessed to be Hutson's mother. He is such a sweet boy who is constantly reminding me to keep things simple and take advantage of my family and the time I have on Earth.
We had a birthday party the day before Hutson turned one. Lots of friends and family were there to share the day together. Hutson made out with some pretty awesome toys and cute clothes. We are so blessed to have so many good people around us.
Our big boy turned one towards the end of last year. I am so blessed to be Hutson's mother. He is such a sweet boy who is constantly reminding me to keep things simple and take advantage of my family and the time I have on Earth.
We had a birthday party the day before Hutson turned one. Lots of friends and family were there to share the day together. Hutson made out with some pretty awesome toys and cute clothes. We are so blessed to have so many good people around us.
My favorite decoration was the pictures on the fire place with pictures of him through the first year. It was so cool to see the changes in him.
I feel really silly posting about this, but thought I needed to add it so one day I could laugh at myself. I have always decorated with elephants with Hutson. His room has matching elephant curtains and bedding. He has about six or so elephant stuffed animals and most his toys somehow correlate to elephants. Well when Hutson was about six months old I found this elephant birthday cake that I just fell IN LOVE with! It was really simple and I thought it would be easy to order. I didn't care about anything with his birthday as long as I had this cake! Of course I waited 'til the last minute to order all of the decorations for the birthday party and waited even longer to get his cake ordered. I went to multiple places to get price quotes. All of them could get the cake made for me, but they all quoted me between $200 and $400 (Mind you, I wanted the smallest cake possible and it was just fondant with a simple elephant, and a few other small decorations on it.). I was floored by the cost of such a simple cake! Grant was out of town this weekend so he was out of touch to talk. I had to make this big decision without him. Poor guy, when he came home Sunday night the first thing I said to him was the news about the cake, and of course I started crying like a mad woman. He has always been so good about noticing when things are important to me and allowing it to happen whether we have the time or money for it. He told me to go ahead and order the cake wherever I could get it in time for the party. He knew how important it was for me, but of course I came to my senses and realized that it was absurd to spend that much money on a gosh darn birthday cake for a kid who isn't going to care about it let alone remember what his first birthday cake was. He was so confused as to why it was a big deal, but to me this meant the world. I see so many of my friends (and Pinterest) who have these perfect parties for their children, and I felt like this cake would make it perfect.
After all the headache and stress, we ended up getting the most perfect cupcake cake in the shape of an elephant. As silly as it was, it was an answer to my prayers and a lesson learned. I learned a valuable lesson to never compare my doings or my mothering to any of those around me. I am the best mom for Hutson, and I need to keep it simple!
Hutson's favorite toy from his GREAT Aunt Becky!
The end result: Elephant cupcake cake
For some reason I gave him the chocolate cupcake instead of the vanilla one.
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