216 Votes…Health Reform JUST PASSED

Thank you, thank you, thank you. How very civilized of us….late but well…..it’s done. Congrats, Mr. President. Well-done. :)

Oh La La

My indulgence is "pretty girls" clothes. Yes, of course, the girls certainly do love shopping with me and they really enjoy the cute clothes we look at….but I’m happy to note that I buy their clothes mostly for me as I’ve just waited all this time over all these years looking forward to buying cute little-girl clothes. I enjoy overindulging and I do not have an iota of guilt about it….Check out these precious dresses…..

We had such a fun time picking out sun glasses today….They want to dress “like Mommy”….I’m sure all the Moms out there hear it all time time but boy-oh-boy it is something I’ve not grown a bit weary of at all…. (Sammi left)

Finally, today, they were sitting out on the screen porch having “a chat” (their words, not mine). They like to sit down and just chit-chat and today when I tried to join them, they politely said to me, “Mommy, this is just a little-girls chat...but could you just take our picture?”…..(oh, okay…..)

(Nicki on left, Sammi on right)

Hugs and Peace!

cin

Mean nasty comments

Guess it was bound to happen. I received a mean and nasty comment on my blog last night that was quite obscene. What is wrong with people? What kind of life do people like that have that makes them think it is just find and dandy to leave obscene comments on a blog that deals with family and innocent little children. How sick they must be. How sick and mean and just utterly despicable. Can't people like that find other venues for their nastiness?

I am now turning on the "Comment won't be displayed until author approves it" setting....

Shame shame shame (shame) on you, you bad and nasty mean person.

In support of the Quest of Balance (subtitle: Artis….)

We have something that is working pretty well for us as it relates to our eternal (and internal….lol….) quest for balance as two full-time career professionals with what I like to say…”big-jobs”……. I eluded to it in a previous post but wanted to share a bit more details…..as it’s working so well…..

For about a year or so, Artis  (our angel from Honduras..oh my are we ever lucky to have connected with her…) was coming to our house each Friday for housekeeping services……deep thorough cleaning with a solid crew, equipment, experience, etc…….But it just wasn’t enough. And……we really (really) appreciated and respected her services, appreciated her dependability, believed in her trustworthiness, liked her crew, her professionalism, etc…… i.e., all the good stuff…

So, right after Christmas, we asked Artis if she could come four times a week to our home to do all our laundry, all the picking-up, additional services, and….ta da….the daily cooking. And, I am SO pleased (and so grateful) to say that it is working wonderfully. Artis is quite a skilled Latino chef and…she’s game to try all my veggie recipes and does quite a nice job. On Mondays, she does loads and loads of laundry and she prepares our Monday meal…..fully and even to the point of setting the table. On Tuesdays, Artis completes any left-over laundry (and she folds and puts up everything) and prepares our Tuesday dinner, on Wed she picks-up and prepares the Wed dinner, Thursday we do leftovers, and on Friday, Artis and her cleaning crew comes for the weekly deep cleaning. All, I’m telling you what….this is the best. We have no major household chores to do……we don’t clean, we don’t do laundry, we don’t “do” bathrooms…..All our non-working time is spent with the girls, with each other, relaxing, etc. I fully appreciate how fortunate we are to be able to afford this but…..I also want to let you know that…in the end…..we don’t go out to dinner like we used to, we take our lunch to work (leftovers…..), we are eating so very healthily…and the reduction in stress in our household by not having to prepare the supper meal, not having to spend Saturday mornings doing loads of laundry, not having to deep-clean…..well, it is really well worth it for us and our lifestyle. I’d give up other amenities to keep our Artis’ services. We both love our careers, we love the activities we invest in outside our girls…..and for us, Artis’ services allow us to spend more quality time (yep, sounds trite but it’s true for us) with our daughters. It’s a good choice for us.

My take-home-point……this is working and our daily life is so.much.better and if you can afford even a bit of these kinds of services/resources and you are a two-professional careers family, I’d seriously consider taking advantage of additional resources.

Here’s to the eternal quest for as much “balance” as possible…..

Peace!

Cin

P.S. The whole idea for tapping into additional resources like we’re now doing is Kathy M.’s idea. Thanks, K. You get all the credit here…. :)

Hello Spring Dresses!

Big Sigh of Relief. SIGH. WHEW. Yay! Spring is coming, the weather is warming up, we’re opening up some windows, we are walking around our yard dreaming and planning about planting flowers, shrubs, digging into our yard projects, etc…..ah…all the signs of Spring. I LOVE Spring more than any other time of the year….

The girls have been asking all winter long, “Can we wear our spring dresses and T-shirts now…..?” “Well, yes, sweethearts, you sure can today…. “

Sammi on left….Nicki on right. Ah…look at my herb garden in the background…just calling to me to dig-up, clean-up, and get things going. In my parts of the country, April 15th is THE magic date for planting. If you plant before that date, you’ll be sorrr-reee as we always seem to have one last hard frost a few days before the 15th. But come then, yippee!!  

Off to our backyard swing-set. You can’t see it from this angle but I have two lovely Adirondack (sp?) chairs positioned to the left of the play set and I sat there and read my beloved NY Times for hours as they played. Then….we ended-up (all 3 of us) having a picnic snack up in the “treehouse”…..The best of things are always the simplest, aren’t they…..

My happy and sweet girls……Nicki on left; Sammi on right….

Happy Spring-is-Finally-Coming!

Hugs,

cin

Of Tea Time and Doggies and Getting Along So Well…

Today, while Ed and I (okay, mostly Ed) arduously stripped-out VISTA (Good Riddance, VISTA, you piece-of-junk…..and Good Riddance to you, too, MicroSoft….you should be ASHAMED of yourselves deploying that piece-of-junk operating system…….whew, i feel better….um…..anyhow…..), the girls played tea in the hallway with Buddy, our Aussie. Buddy adores being around the girls and feels like it is his duty to be sure they have his companionship and he has their back…Where there are girls…..there also shall be the Budster…..

I’m constantly amazed at how well the two girls (and Buddy) play together for simply hours-and-hours….and hours all day long. Sure, they occasionally whine and argue with each other but I’d say it’s well less than 1% of their time together. I attended a birthday party last month and got to chatting with one of the moms there who also has 4 yr old twins (identical girls)….I could tell she really did not believe me when I said Sammi and Nicki are great with each other……She seemed absolutely convinced it was not possible for siblings (much less twins) to get along the way i was saying Sam and Nick do..…Sad,huh…

Ah, so….Buddy’s getting sleepy there in the last picture and so am I….more later.

Hugs,

Cindy

Paying It Forward -- The Sillies & Smiles

I know I’ve said many times that we have a lot of giggles and sillies at our house….well….I do mean quite.a. lot. of sillies…. The cool thing about the sillies is that they are contagious, they are extremely cheap, and having the sillies can make you want to “pay it forward” in spades. When I’m smart (which i surely am not a lot of the time….), I put memories of the sillies & smiles right into my pocket so that I can pull them back out when I need them the most.... Try it out – I assure you that it really works….

So….do you? Do you have just perhaps a teeny-tiny little bit of a smile on your face?

If you do, then please pay it forward…

Hugs,

cin

It’s Getting Better All the Time…Better, Better, Better

Better…..much better. The Woloszyn-House-of-Sick is not as sick and we’re all getting better each day. Oh Happy Day! This has been a long haul…since ‘bout first week of January up through to now….so better on that front. And---and---the weather is going to be lovely this weekend in the 50s and low 60s with full and total sunshine. Oh Double Happy Day! I tell you, the older I get, the more tired I become of cold weather. Of course, I am really a Cuban girl from Miami and think 65 is still pretty cool and 86 is perfect and 96 works for me, too! :)

So, the other “better….much better” thing going on is that work has settled down a bit now that we’ve very (very) wrapped up a very (very!) successful endeavor that required 8 months of my life for 60-70 a week with no break. That baby is done!

With all this new-founded time and a bit of better health on my hands, I grabbed the camera the other day while Sammi and Nicki were drawing pictures. Oh, they LOVE to draw pictures. So so love it. Their teacher said they have a bit of extra skills and interest she normally doesn’t see in 4 year olds and is encouraging us to find some art camps for them this summer…which we shall…..

Does it look like a fun evening? Yep, it sure was……..And aren’t they getting so big!! No more baby girls…..they are adorable little ladies. Oh my, I do so so love being a Mommy. I love it more than I ever believe I would or I could. Mommyhood Rocks…it just truly does. And, having these two girls makes it a Double-Rock!

Hugs,

Cindy