Had a lovely birthday once I managed to get out of the house. Dh gave me what a SAHM really needs- a day off! I spent my day here: http://www.chateauelanatlanta.com/

EbonyBoy gave me a run for my money early Friday morning. He decided to get up bright and early and help himself to some lipstick from my purse. When I say help himself what I mean is he smeared it from head to toe all over himself and proceeded to rub it into my bedroom carpet and my white chaise lounge bench. Let’s just suffice it to say I’ll never forget this birthday!

My server crashed at my primary host and they lost 10 days worth of data. I have definitely learned my lesson to always backup sites from now on. To think I was finally getting in the hang of daily posts too.

Happy Mother’s Day!

We had a great day. Started off going to church and inviting some friends who recently moved to Atlanta to both church and dinner afterwards. I’m still working on becomming better at the hostessing thing- one of these days I’ll be able to entertain without stressing myself out and worrying that everything isn’t absolutely perfect. Today went ok but I can’t lie yes I was nitpicking myself to death.

Anyways the menu was a lovely one- dh grilled shishkabobs and vegetables. He then made a lovely strawberry shortcake with his own special homemade shortcakes. My current love of white tea lead him to get me the perfect gift- a new teapot with built in strainer. I can’t wait to try it out.

Hope everyone had a very Happy Mother’s Day

Had a pretty serious discussion tonite with dh. We moved into a lovely house in Atlanta. Just like everything else- we found our home on the internet first and wound up choosing it on the second day of our house hunting trip from Seattle. Though this house is nice I realize there are several things about it that I would seriously like to change. Dh makes a comfortable income which allows me to be at home to raise our children for now- and eventually when I return to working (hopefully as a business owner) we will easily have more than ample income to do a variety of things. However right now our budget is much more limited.

While I was talking to Tifi one night I was playing around and showing her some of the homes for sale in my neighborhood. I then checked out some houses in neighboring communities and realized that for a lower mortgage we could easily get into a larger home that would have basement for dh and other amenities. So this makes me wonder if its really worth it to hold on to a big house when you don’t have much room for savings, etc.

I’ve decided to make a list of pros/cons just to think through this

Pros of keeping this house:

• I love love love my neighborhood its beautiful and very scenic.
• I have great neighbors who I have quite a bit in common with.
• The location of this home has it appreciating very quickly- we are one of the lower end houses while some of my neighbors homes have doubled in value even though my subdivision isn’t very old (the oldest homes are less than 8 years old).
• No stress with worrying about house hunting fo a new home or moving
• We’re not very far from our church

Cons of keeping this house:

• The schools in my area are horrible. Unless DS is admitted into one of the magnets in the area I would have to home school- sending him to the regular public school isn’t an option its too problem filled and underperforming because they are severely overpopulated.
• Stretching finances month to month has grown tiresome. I’d like more room in my belt to put towards savings and to establish 529 plans for my sons.
• Utility bills are not great for heating and cooling because of the vaulted ceilings.
• My kitchen is too small. Dh and I both love to cook so much and its hard when we can’t both be in there together- we seriously need an island.
• The large yard is quite a bit of maintenance and I’d love to have something small enough that I could easily keep it up, landscape and garden without it being so overwhelming.
• We’re near a lake so the exterior of the house wears faster and requires cleaning, etc. to keep it looking good.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far. We’re praying on this because I know we’ll figure out what’s the best step to take just like moving to Atlanta turned out to be one of the best decisions yet.

We’re scared, very very scared all the time. DS#1 has recently learned the meaning of scared so he’s been experimenting with using it more and more. He’s become a bit of an actor so he enjoys acting out different emotions- he’ll walk around with an angry scowl or he’ll laugh joyously and tell me how funny he is. The scared phase has been both good and bad. The bad is that it makes me worry that something is wrong- as a Mom of course you never want your child to feel scared or sad or threatened but he will have a panicked look on his face and tell me that he’s scared! Then I’ll ask what he’s scared of and it could be anything from his juice to the park to bears and everything else in between. One of his favorite things to be scared of is the potty which has made potty training more of a struggle than it needs to be (we’ve had several dry days in a row now though praise God).

The good of being scared is today while we were at the park he decided that he’s scared of cars. So anytime a car drove anywhere in our vicinity he’d stop what he was doing and run to my side to grab my hand. He sticks to me like glue now whenever we are out in public because he’s scared. It’s nice to not have to worry about him running off or anything but this being scared all of the time seems like it would be a draining proposition. I’m hoping we move on to something else soon - like completely potty trained!