for the kids

Blogging trouble

It's 3:30am and I can't sleep so I'm trying to upload my layouts from the weekend but it's given me an error for the 2nd time! Grrr, how frustrating.

**edited** It works now :)


Journaling: I was only three when our family fled from Vietnam so I was too young to remember a thing. I wish I could witness what my parents went through to make a better life for us today. I’ve heard the stories of how we had to camp out in the refugee island of Malaysia & my cousin Viet tells me I owe him big time because he was the one who carried me across the waters as we hid out in the boats. In January of 2000, twenty years after leaving the country, we took a family vacation to Vietnam. My grandfather had just passed away and it was in his will for my uncle, the newly ordained priest, to go back and say mass for our people. I was 23 at the time & had no idea what to expect. The land was beautiful and I quickly realized all the things I took for granted.

We would wake up each morning at 4:00am with the rooster crowing and walk to mass. Bicycles are the number one vehicle of transportation and there are no stoplights! There is only one community telephone for the neighborhood, no indoor plumbing so the bathroom is in the out house and mom hand washed our clothing for us. It was the first time I’ve seen dog meat served and wasn’t about to try it. We slept on hardwood beds with mosquito nettings around us. For 3 weeks, I was very fortunate to see first hand the place that was once called home.

3 years ago

Three years ago today, my water broke at 3:30am one week before my due date, we headed to the hospital and after 2 1/2 hours of monitoring & pushing, a beautiful baby girl blessed our lives! Happy birthday Makenzie! She woke up crying for Mommy this morning when Lam tried to carry her to the car, she was still crying for me not to leave for work when we dropped her off at grandma's house.

I took her to ToysRus this weekend to let her pick out a toy and she chose three things: a purple tellitubby that comes with a matching headband (she can now be tinkywinky) a tinkerbelle umbrella, and a pack of gum.

Not a very fun weekend but productive. I completed 4 pages, 3 tax returns, cooked, cleaned the house and watched the backyardigans with the kids. Lam actually helped cleaned the bathrooms and a few loads of laundry, I was sooooo impressed with him!

Oh, I almost forgot the highlight, Micah used the little potty two times! He wanted his diaper off and the minute I took it off, he of course went all over his little chair & floor so I got out Kenze's old potty chair and he went in it. At 17 months old, we're off to a good start. Maybe we can finally stop buying diapers.

Scrap Yourself

Today is the first day of class at NYCScraps, Scrap yourself with Debbie Hodge. I really like how my page turned out. I wrote the journaling during work today so putting the page together didn't take as long.

Simple

Cha Ching!

My meeting went fine, my boss really helped lead the discussion and filled in the quiet spots so now I can let out a big breath of air and relax. Lam and I both found out how much our raises were today. It was a good year for our company so we both got decent increases. I am so relieved about our finances...now I can take Debbie's on-line class after all.

Nervous

I am soooo nervous about my meeting tommorrow. In order to get my greenbelt certification for work I have to lead a Kaizen which is a meeting that goes over the tools we learned. So I have to present my topic to 19 engineers/business project leaders including my boss. I HATE public speaking, that's why I went into the field of accounting. I thought we sit behind our desks and don't have to do these kinds of things! Hopefully I don't faint. I usually just talk too fast and forget half of the things I planned on saying.

On the home front we aren't doing much better than we were on Friday. Kids are still sick and my throat is aching so bad from all the coughing. We did bring them to Sesame street live yesterday because the tickets were already paid for & they seemed to be doing better. Kenzie was scared of the characters but Micah loved all the music, he was entranced and danced right along. I can't believe the price of souvenirs $15 for an elmo hat that Kenzie wanted because the girl sitting in front of us had one but she hates wearing hats.