Changes on the Farm

My husband and two youngest kids went camping last week. Since I was out of vacation time at work, I stayed to take care of the growing herd of animals. (Since I really don’t like sleeping on foam pads anymore, I was happy to miss out.) Anyway, while I was doing the morning chores on the “farm”, I lured a few of them closer so I could take their pics.

Here are our two newest members. My daughter and her friend named them T-Bone and Brisket. How can we eat them? They’re so cute!

 

 

 

 

But wait! There’s more!!

 

I know he looks dead, but he’s actually getting a good scratch in.

 

A new batch of chickens because coyotes ate almost all of the others.

 

 

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Balancing Work, Family and Guilt

I’m feeling guilty again. Is it just one of the plagues of motherhood? Guilt for working full time while my kids are home all summer. Never mind that they sleep until noon. Guilt for not working part-time instead of full-time. Guilt for enjoying my time at work.  Guilt for vegging in front of the TV or computer when I get home from work instead of making dinner with them.  Guilt for not seeing my kids as much as I’d like because they’re teenagers and would rather hang out with their friends than their nerdy mother.

(Speaking of which, my 16 year old son just blew in, introduced a new friend, rattled off his plans, grabbed two frozen pizzas and a bag of Cheetos, and raced upstairs to grab who-knows-what.  I won’t see him again until midnight so I purposely stood at the bottom of the stairs so he HAD to hug and kiss me before he left.)

I know that guilt DOES have a purpose. When my oldest daughter was in high school, she used to accuse me of making her feel guilty. I reminded her that sometimes we feel guilty BECAUSE we’ve done something wrong. As a mom, though, it can be hard to distinguish between guilt that is for a purpose and guilt so we can beat ourselves up for not being the perfect person we’ve concocted in our minds. Sometimes I announce that maybe I should quit my job. The kids just look at me like I’m crazy. So that means I’m just going to have to use the guilt to help me find balance. Meal planning or Pinterest? Dinner or TV? Taking necessary time to relax or fiddling away the entire evening after work? Doing dishes with my kids so we can chat or watching more TV?

I think I have my answer. I can’t do it all, but I can certainly pick what’s most important to me and my family and concentrate on that. I feel better already.

 

 

Newport and PicMonkey

What do these two things have in common, you ask? Not much, but I’m battling a case of insomnia so it seemed like a good time to play around with the photos I took when the family went to Newport, Oregon last month. I’ve never used PicMonkey, but I’ve noticed that many bloggers do cool things with their photos so I thought I’d give it a whirl. The only thing I did was crop and clean up my pictures and add my blog name (which I really think is cool!).

Anyway, our condo was on the bay, so I took a few pictures when I went for a walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Typical cool, Oregon coast weather and gray skies.

 

 

 

 

I think I’m going to take a picture of my feet whenever I go on vacation. 

 

There’s still a month left for vacationing.  Camping anyone?