Kyle's Birthday Celebration

So Kyle celebrated his 11th birthday this past Friday on January 25th. Bro. Perry had learned about this sleep over and asked if he was invited to the party. Kyle told him the only way he could come is if he brought a box a Krispy Kreme Donuts. I told Kyle not to get his hopes up, and wouldn't you know, Bro. Perry called me at 5:55 PM on Friday night and asked if the party had started yet. I asked him if he was planning to stop by for pizza, but he said that he just wanted to bring Kyle some donuts. Wasn't that sweet? He remembered and totally made Kyle's birthday! What a nice thing for him to do. He has no idea the impact that made on Kyle. Not just for the donuts, but remembering his special day in general. Thank you Steve.

Kyle had invited 13 friends over to help him celebrate. What was I thinking? Everyone came over for pizza and such and we tried to play games, but the energy level was out of control! At one point I even told the kids that my 3-4 year old daycare children were better behaved! It was awful. I was thinking the energy level would have changed once the girls went home at 9:30, but actually I couldn't even tell they were gone. By 11:30 PM I couldn't stay awake any longer and went to bed. Those boys never went to sleep. I heard them all night long. By 7 AM the next morning, I heard loud noises in the daycare kitchen to find out that they were going to cook their own breakfast. I don't think so! Once breakfast was over there was still almost 3 hours before the party ended. Now in the past when we've had sleepover for the girls, I had to drag them out of bed to feed them before going home at 10:30. I thought that would have been the same with the boys. I was proven wrong. Just a suggestion for those thinking of having a sleepover for boys, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! Or.... take them all swimming for the entire evening before hand.

Sunday after church we drove to Puyallup to celebrate his birthday with family. My sister Suzy offered to let us use her home since they have a ton of things for the children to do there, verses going to my parents house. Kyle received mostly items relating to the Seahawks. He was pretty excited about that. He didn't want a traditional cake, he wanted Krispy Kreme donuts instead. Between what Bro. Perry gave him and what he had on Sunday, I think we're good on the whole donut thing for awhile. Oh ya, my sister Niki also gave him a Krispy Kreme gift card.

Friends and Family Cookbook

As most of you know, I love to cook. Doesn't necessarily mean that I'm a great cook, but I do like to try out new recipes. My most favorite hobby is looking through cookbooks and collecting new recipes to try out on family and friends. Although I cook all day long for many children, night time cooking seems to be neglected around my house simply because I'm just too tired. Having friends over for dinner gives me delight as well as an excuse to sit down and eat as a family. (What a concept!)

I was inspired to put together this cookbook because many of my family and friends have requested recipes in the past from different dishes I have made. So over the past 2 years I've been compiling recipes and trying to put this cookbook together. A lot of thought was put into the layout of how I wanted this book to look. I wanted it to be extra special by adding pages that had measurements and substitutions, counting calories, cooking terms as well as quick fixes. I had lots of options for additional pages, but I wanted to stick with the most practical ones.

It took a couple of years to achieve this goal. The first time I entered all my recipes and tried to submit it for publishing, the on-line company said that this was only on on-line site. Are you kidding me? There was no way to get these in a cookbook form? I was really discouraged an uncertain if I wanted to commit the time all over again. I decided to do some homework before investing that kind of time again. I finally found a company that would publish for me, of course after I re-typed everything in their program. So the task began all over again.

I dare say this book was made with love. Many of these recipes I grew up with. I didn't tell most of my family and of course none of my friends that I was putting this together because I wanted to give these out as Christmas gifts to everyone. Many recipes are from extended family and friends. I did give credit where credit was due. I do hope that these recipes are enjoyed for generations to come.

Unfortunately, when placing this order the minimum amount of books that I could order was 200. So....if anyone is ever looking for a gift idea for someone, I have cases and cases of cookbooks for sale. I am selling them for $15 a book. Please let your friends know.

Provider of the Month

http://www.funshineexpress.com/C_provider.asp

I received a call today from Fun Shine Express who is the company I order my preschool curriculum from, and they told me that I won Provider of the Month. Several of my daycare mom's nominated me and now I'm being featured on the web. I felt honored to have received such recognition. Click on the link if you want to find out what they said.

Thank you Mindy, Shana, Kim and Suzanne for your thoughtful words. I really do love my job and my many children.

New Year's Resolutions

Okay, so it's the New Year and have I done anything about making changes for 2008? Let's be realistic, New Year's Resolutions are over-rated. It's really hard to change habits, whether good or bad. So in all honesty, I'm just going to try to make improvements one step at a time. If I can't do it all right now, then so what! Life keeps on going.

At first I created a list of things I wanted to change or to learn, but the list became so long that it was just too overwhelming. All I'd be doing is setting myself up for failure and disappointment. So I decided to prioritize my list into categories on their importance. For example, I really want to learn all there is to know about blogging. How to make changes, put my blog to music, have lists, cool quotes and pictures, just like everyone else. But if it doesn't happen right now, what's does that really mean? I guess it just means that I won't have a cool blog to look at and I may be the last to learn of things or news going on in others lives. That's okay by me. What's more important to me, is that I'm keeping a journal. If I can spend time once a week blogging, then I had better spend just as much time recording in my journal. Journal first, blogging second. More like a reward to myself. Once I establish this habit, then I can move on to something else. As for now, it is what it is.