A Stay-at-Home Mom kind of day

Yesterday was perfect. We didn't do anything big but it felt so good to spend quality time with the boys. Don't get me wrong when I vent here. I am supposed to work part time at our church (16 hours a week) and any extra time I consider my volunteer time. Well lately it has been around 40 plus hours a week. I can't get away from the place as there is always something that needs to be done. I spend more time taking care of Church than I do my home. Even the day I had the flu, I had to go in to pay some vendors. Now I love the church and what I do. I just need to learn how to not take everything on and to ask for help from others. It has become more of a full time job instead of community service. I need to get back to loving it and not dreading what I have left undone. So yesterday I took the day off! This is pretty big since I am there 7 days a week. So I blocked everything out in my mind and spent the day focused only on the boys.

We went to the park to play in the morning. How cute are they?!!! We went shopping for a birthday party we are attending this weekend. And coincidentally we found "Old Puffer Pete." William has wanted this specific train since the beginning of the year and we could never find him.

And I know this is probably not a big deal to anyone else but FINALLY some of our Wal-Marts and Targets have become Super Centers. California didn't allow super centers before (I forget the word used here for that). Well they finally lifted it and now we have them. You don't realize how much you love super centers until you don't have them. And the prices are amazing! So Target had some Easter Egg cookie sets on sales obviously. They were $10 marked down to $2.25. So our project of the day was decorating cookies.....or eating the frosting.

We actually took a nap after this which is huge for my boys. When we got up, we had dinner and went back to the park with Dad. Then exercised together-the boys are so cute trying to do jumping jacks and crunches. I will have to videotape it for you. Baths, reading and bed. It was just a nice relaxing family day that I missed so much. I love being a stay-at-home mom and I need to get back to the focus of that. Not that it isn't ok to take care of other things but taking care of my family and myself first.

Happy Easter

Wow What an incredibly busy weekend. We had services for Maundy Thursday. We skipped Good Friday services to attend a going away party for a friend at Scott's work. Then Saturday we were busy getting ready for Easter. First we attended an Easter vigil at our church. Check out my handsome men!Then Sunday morning came. The Easter Bunny left a trail of jelly beans from the boys room to the kitchen table where their baskets awaited them.

Check out their hair! Cracks me up.

The boys really wanted fishing poles and were surprised the Easter Bunny brought them!

Talk about resisting temptation.

Then I was off to church to set up before services. After church we had an Easter Egg hunt and a Sunday Brunch. We had a great turnout! This was just our table.

Check out my handsome men. They look like little Mormon boys. I'm not making fun of Mormons. I'm just laughing that the box Harrison is holding looks like a bible and they look like they are about to walk door to door :) Brunch was fantastic!Desserts were awesome. Our friends from college started a business, Porrello Girls, and the desserts were a big hit! The Egg Hunt!Our cute family :)Did I ever say taking a picture was easy????
When we got home, we were surprised to find that the Easter Bunny hid more eggs in our back yard!

It was a great day! I hope we all remember the true reason for today! This is the day that the Lord has made, Let us rejoice and be glad in it!!!! Happy Easter to all of you!

So Incredibly Proud

Let me give you a bit of a background. We put William in preschool because he can be anti-social. It took over 4 months but after that, he doesn't cry EVERY time I drop him off anymore. For his Christmas singalong, he stood up there and looked miserable. Last weekend his preschool was singing for their church so we went there before heading to our church. Well he wouldn't even go up to the front with all of the kids. Instead he cried bloody murder and sat on my lap. So this past Wednesday at Community Bible Study the boys were scheduled to sing in front of all of the women. Throughout the week we practiced their songs if by some miracle they would actually sing them. I mean what would change from Sunday to Wednesday? There are A LOT of women that attend CBS and if you can tell from the picture, there were only 6 children "singing."

I tried to hide so that the boys wouldn't see me and I had a friend take my camera. But the teacher next to William pointed me out and I thought it was over at that point. He looked like the water works were about to start. So all 6 kids got up there and not one of them sang! You could hear the teachers pretty good though. It was over and the little boy in the green stripes started singing and was pretty good. This must of prompted Will because out of nowhere, William grabbed the microphone from his teacher.

And he sang solo and sung his little heart out!!!!! I was in absolute disbelief because if you knew William well, this was complete opposite of his personality in big crowds. And sang loud, clear and very proud. I think my smile was from ear to ear as my heart just melted!!!! AND every one clapped and cheered because he was fantastic. I couldn't be more proud of my little William!!! Oh and if you look at the very first picture, you can see Harrison on the right looking at William while he sang :)

Saving Babies

Please notice our sidebar on the left. Scott and I (along with William and Harrison) take part every year in the March of Dimes walk. Farmer's Insurance Group is the second largest sponsor of the March of Dimes.

We are walking in both the LA walk on April 30th and the Simi Valley 5.5 mile walk on May 21st.

Every day, thousands of babies are born too soon, too small and often very sick. I'm walking in March for Babies because I want to do something about this. And I need your help. I know times are tough for everyone but remember even a dollar goes a long way.
Please support my walk at http://www.marchforbabies.org/jymmelyn. Making a secure donation is easy: just click the 'donate now' button on this page. Thank you for helping me give all babies a healthy start!

The mission of March of Dimes is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality. Thank you in advance for any donation you can make!

Love,
The Archers

Archer Good-Nights

Every night before we go to bed, we pray and then ask each other, "what are you going to dream about tonight." Typical answers are "butterflies, Monster Trucks, Nascars, etc." Tonight's conversation went like this...

Me: "What are you going to dream about tonight?"
William: "You."
Me: "Ah thanks, are you going to dream about anything else?"
William: "Yeah me and Harry playing with puppies."
Me: "Harry, what are you going to dream about tonight?"
Harry: "Butts!!! Ha ha ha"
William: "Ha ha ha"

An Impromtu Kind of Day

Saturday was a pretty fun day! First William attending "Journey on the Cross" at his preschool. He learned all about Holy Week in a 13 stop walk with activities. It was 90 degrees on Saturday so we thought the beach would be a good idea. We tend to forget that sometimes it is 15 degrees colder on the beach and the wind is chilly. But we still had a really fun time. We started with a picnic lunch. Followed by a lot of sports. Mainly baseball and catch.

We are trying to teach Harrison to be ambidextrous with sports since he is left handed :)

We walked along the beach and on the marina, there are all these birds diving for fish. The boys found it hilarious and we must of watched them dive for over an hour just cracking up.

Funny faces

I love that they were just in their own little conversation on the rocks.

Me and my boys.

We decided to go up to the pier. While we were there, we decided to stop for some tapas. Harry was being funny.

Here is the view from our table.

Then we heard some noise as we were leaving the pier and we were trying to figure out what it was. Turns out the Ventura race track was a couple blocks away so we decided to drive down there and bought some tickets.

We definitely weren't dressed for it at all. The funny thing is that I had a change of clothes for the boys in case they got wet but I didn't think about me. All I had was a swimsuit, dress and sweater. Scott's work out bag was still in the car so I wore his jeans rolled over at the waist to keep them up :) Ha. Nothing about the day was planned but I think that is what made it so fun.

Now Belle was not happy seeing we didn't get home until after 11pm and forgot to leave a light on for her :( Poor Belle.

The Power of Mon Chi Chi

This is MY Mon Chi Chi :) When I was a little girl, this was my most favorite toy/doll. I loved my Mon Chi Chi. Well almost every Christmas Eve my mom would load up all of our toys and drive to the "not so nice part of town" and leave boxes of our toys in the apartment hallways so that the unfortunate kids would wake up Christmas morning and have new toys. I wasn't so happy about this when I was a kid but we were always so happy in the morning when Santa brought us new toys anyway. I think this was a great life lesson my mom taught us. Anyway, one Christmas morning was not so happy for me. When I woke up, my toy cash register was gone and that is where I kept all of my money (I'm sure this made some kid very happy). But more importantly, my Mon Chi Chi was gone. He was passed on to another good owner so I hoped. But still I was not happy about this. So about a month ago I was at Target and low and behold I walk passed this guy. A Mon Chi Chi. Now this one is a little different because he can't suck on his toes like my old one did but he can on one thumb. So a flood of memories came back and the nostalgic Jymme-Lyn had to buy him. When I came home I was kind of (not completely) kidding around with the boys and told them this was MY toy. Mr. Mon Chi Chi does take residence in the boys toy room. I was surprised the other day how much power Mon Chi Chi holds. If you know Harry well, you know he is about the most stubborn kid you will meet. He says, "NO!" a lot and he has quite the little temper. He is a man in his own world. The other day I wanted him to know how much this hurts my feelings when he doesn't listen to me or yells at me so I pretended to cry. All of the sudden, Harry took off running. I was thinking he thought I was crazy. But no, he came back holding Mon Chi Chi and said, "here you go mom, all better." I thought he was so cute ... and he said sorry. Now every time I act sad because Harry is yelling at me , Mon Chi Chi shows up in Harry's hands. And randomly Harry will bring me him and tell me Mon Chi Chi was asking for me. Surprisingly enough, Harry has been better lately. Ah, the power of Mon Chi Chi.

"Bye bye Spot, I love you."

Ok, well I have to admit that I feel like the worst parent today. I have had my salt water fish tank set up since we moved here in 2008. It is a very fun hobby to have but it can be time consuming and costly. In the past year, I have neglected my hobby. I haven't bought that many new fish as old ones died off. So my goal was to get rid of the tank and fish. We were down to one fish, Spot. Well my hood broke on my tank yesterday and that was my sign. I called the fish store and asked if they wanted him. I did not want to buy a new hood and light. So the drama begins. Will started crying. I explained to BOTH of them that Spot needs a home with a light and he is lonely. He wants friends. So I go in the bedroom to put Harry's shoes on him and I hear William talking to Spot. "I'm going to miss you. I love you but don't be sad. You are going to have red crab friends and you will be happy, ok?" So we take Spot to the fish store. Both boys were very excited to see him make friends with an angel and a yellow tang. He looked happy. Harry precedes to the front desk and tells the clerk, "His name is Spot and tell him you love him." We both thought it was so cute. She said she will call him Spot every morning and tell him she loves him when she feeds him until he finds a new home. We walked past his new tank and said, "bye bye Spot, I love you." So we start to leave and Harry breaks down, "Spot has to come with us. His play date is over." I thought he understood and he didn't at all. He cried the entire way home and cried himself to sleep. If you know Harry, he doesn't nap. He still hasn't talked to me. I didn't think of my hobby being theirs. Harry and Will fed the fish every morning and they have always had fish in their life. We had the tank since Harry was 5 months old. They don't know any different. I wish I thought my decision through more carefully than I had. Not the best decision I made as a parent today. :(

Archer Tidbits

This is just something I think was so cute that I don't want to forgot about. The other night we were reading the Children's Bible to the boys before bed. Harry pointed to one of the men and said, "he has a grown up." I was a little confused by his verbiage saying he had a grown up but I just responded, "yes he is a grown up." So we turn to the next page and he pointed to the men on that page and said, "they have grown ups too!" At that point I was a little confused and asked Harry what he was talking about. He then pointed to their beards and mustaches and said, "see they have grown ups." I don't know where he got it from but he thought facial hair is called "grown up." Ha. So cute