Everyday Live Happy

It is finally October! It is one of my favorite times of the year. It is finally fall. The leaves are changing color. It is sweater and boots season. And most importantly, it is time to celebrate Halloween! I LOVE Halloween! I'm not exactly sure when this obsession started. As a kid I loved dressing up and going trick or treating and carving jack-o-lanterns. Now I try to decide for months what I'm going to be for Halloween and what costume I'm going to make for my daughter. We have it narrowed down to a couple of options. I have all of my decorations (and there are many!) up by the end of September. We go to the pumpkin patch near our home complete with a hay wagon ride around a field of pumpkins. We have a get together with friends to decorate Halloween houses. (Think gingerbread house except with graham cracker house creations and decorated to look like a haunted house! It is great!) Of course with the invention of Pinterest my daughter and I have already come up with...

My daughter in law Ashley is expecting her and my son's first child - and our first grandchild. We are pretty excited and of course they are too! They have lots to do though and only a couple of weeks to get it all done. Luckily my cute sister in law, Becca, through her a baby shower. Once they had the shower they would know which items they still needed to get. What to buy? Kind of hard because I'd already given her my standard baby gift. Goodnight moon and a blanket or pajamas. I'd given her that months ago. I knew that I wanted to make a gift for them. I had a neighbor that had made her expectant daughter some adorable burp cloths. That's a funny thing to say "adorable burp cloths." But they really are. She used fat quarters and terry cloth. I was able to find really fun fat quarters. They were printed with the cutest boy patterns that I've ever seen. Animals and monsters. The theme of the shower was safari so of course the animals were perfect. Monst...

I'm a lucky person. I'm lucky because I love my job! I am an instructional assistant (IA) at an elementary school near my home. As an IA I get to go to three different class rooms everyday. I help them with their workshop time when they split the kids up into small groups. I get to teach in a kindergarten class, a first grade class and a second grade class. For my first and second grade classes I help with their reading workshops. In each I teach a mini lesson to four small groups. So I teach the same thing in each class four different times. In kindergarten I do the same four lessons, but I might do their math lesson with them or work with rhyming or another skill not just reading. (I do teach a lot of reading lessons to the kindergartners though too.) I love what I do and I am beyond impressed with the teachers that I get to work with in their classrooms everyday. That's what brings me to my thoughts today. I work with a kindergartner teacher who I know by experience is...

School is just around the corner - actually it starts in 2 days for us - and with that comes a question. What's for lunch? I don't know what your kids like, but at our house we have one that eats school lunch everyday and one that only eats it occasionally. And at my job I only get a 1/2 hour lunch break. That's not enough time to grab something from somewhere and still have time to eat it. That means making a home lunch most days for both my daughter and me. Luckily she can make her own lunch, but that still leaves the question of what to eat. Honestly you can only eat so many sandwiches and there aren't always a lot of options. What to do. So I did what I usually do when I have a question, I went to Pinterest. Again. I spent quite a bit of time on Pinterest today looking at home lunch ideas. There are TONS of them! Literally so many ideas. It can get overwhelming looking at so many different ideas. Because they can't just post one idea, you have to go to their b...

We always love going to other places and seeing what is there. I've been to New York and seen the sights there. I've been to California and spent time on the beach and at theme parks. I've been to many other states and visited the sights there. Something that I'm not very good at is exploring my own backyard. There are many places in Utah that I've never been to or that I haven't been to since I was a kid. That means my own children have never been to these places either. Not okay! There are people from all over the world to coma and see all the parks in Utah. So I've been trying to do more seeing whats in my backyard. This week we went to a place that isn't a national park. No one will come to see it from other countries, but it is somewhere that we had yet to explore. About 2 years ago a small community next to our small community built a fun playground and splash pad. Now my daughter thought that she was too old to go to a playground on her own, but...

Summer always seems like it goes by way too fast. Maybe it's because we enjoy having lazy days without school. Maybe it's because we enjoy the warm weather. Maybe it's because we try to pack in as much fun as possible. I'm not sure which one it is, but I'm pretty sure that it is a combination of all of them. We love staying up late talking and watching movies.and then sleeping in. We love being outside in the warm sun. We love trying to fulfill each days fun "schedule." It seems like time is always flying by. I'm not sure who said that my kids could grow up so fast. It seems like every time I blink another year goes by. I heard recently that we only have 18 summers with each of our children. That scares me! I did not agree to only 18 summers. That is not enough. That makes me want to cram even more into our summers than I already do. It can start to drive me crazy! That is not what I or my family want. I'm working on enjoying the moment and letti...

I remember as when I was growing up we had a "quiet time" week days during the summer. It was usually for an hour right after lunch. During this time the TV was off and we didn't play with friends or even our toys. It was a time to read or take a nap. I think my mom just needed it quiet so my little brother would take a nap. Or maybe she just needed a break. Either way, it gave me an hour everyday to read. I loved to read. We would go to the library or the bookmobile and get books every week. We also had lots of books too. There was always something to read. As I got older I continued to read for fun. I had gained a love of books. After my kids were born we didn't have a designated "quiet time" because I worked some days. So instead I would read to them after they laid down in bed at night. I have vivid memories of my kids in their bunkbeds listening to my read "The Magic Tree House" books to them as they fell asleep. It was a time when lif...

I don't know anyone who loves cleaning their house. It is not fun. But I do love living in a clean house. Living in a dirty house is gross and embarrassing. Don't like cleaning and don't like living in a mess do not go together. You are going to have to do something that you don't want to do. Personally, I'd rather clean and then be done with it. Don't like doing it but I really like the end result. So I clean. But I am not the only one that lives in my house so I don't think that cleaning should just be my responsibility. (Imagine that!) Despite what my children sometimes think, I am not their personal maid. During the school year I ask them to do specific chores a couple of times a week, depending on the amount of homework they have. Usually I have them empty of fill the dishwasher or put laundry away. Simple, quick chores. (Even my husband who works all day helps clean the house. He's awesome at vacuuming, sweeping and taking out the trash.) However...