Ho Ho Ho

i hope everyone enjoyed their day yesterday. we woke up and opened presents, showed mason that santa had eaten the cookies and drank the milk we left out for him. i'm not sure if he buys that, he kind of looked at me with this seriously mom? look. oh well, its fun anyway. i attempted to take mason to the movies & after waiting 30 mins for them to fix the sound problem in the theater i decided to get a refund & leave. time is short with a four year old, however he did AWESOME and i feel confident that he is ready to be a movie-goer! yeah! last night we went to mimi's house and spent time with her and an old friend of hers. she cooked a herb crusted roast - YUM! yum yum yum. by last night i was exhausted. stevie was pretty needy yesterday and for some reason i generally had a bad attitude. isn't that awful? oh well! i was not the photographer i planned on being, i only took a few pics.

merry xmas numero uno

we went to mimi's today to celebrate xmas with mike's brother kelly, his fiance dmitri and our neice haley. haere are some pics of the cottingham fam:

cookie time

on saturday we had the andersons over to paint christmas cookies. it was the first time i've made them by myself without my mom (i used the recipe that we have been making cookies with since i was a kid) mason & caedan had fun painting them, oh yeah, mike & dave did too :-)

i really can get addicted to anything

so i went to the book store on thursday and picked up a copy of twilight. i had to see what all of the ruckuss was over this young adult teen vampire love story. yeah, i read the first AND second book in 3 days. she's no anne rice but i immediately got hooked in to the characters (although i must confess i was getting a little over the love story by the end of the first book) but it quickly redeemd itself when the plot thickened. needless to say i am a twilight junkie and am looking forward to seeing the movie. i definitley think that a little escapism is healthy, but uh, yeah. put down the book lady.

i have no idea whats wrong with me lately. i have been in the dumps quite a bit. feeling sad, overwhelmed, like i just want to give up (on what i'm not sure). i had a good, much needed, cry at my meeting this morning. i heard many things i needed to hear. i heard that we all have what we need inside of us. courage. love. goodness. its all there just waiting to be tapped into. i heard that god appreciates effort. i hope so much that that is true. i feel like a failure so often in my attitude and actions around my family. (intellectually i know i am a good wife & mother and that i am making progress - but sometimes it FEELS like its not good enough.) i was told that bad mothers don't sit around wondering if they are good mothers. i heard that practicing patience & tolernace is so very important, i guess i'm supposed to do that with myself too, huh? i heard not to give up.
i think at the end of the day i am damn hard on myself. i wonder if that means i am too hard on all of you? don't we tend to reflect, or project, or whatever, that kind of stuff? needless to say i am still here. sometimes i just want to run away from this beautiful life and hide. start over. live selfishly. sometimes i don't want to sweep the floor, AGAIN. don't want to do laundry. wipe runny noses. get up tp feed the baby. on and on. but i do. because really it is a privelege and an honor and a pleasure, mostly.

so three things i'm grateful for:
the health of my children
caramel filled ghiradelli milk chocolate
bedtime :-)

glad i have boys, i think....

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

"dear god......"

mason has finally gotten to the point where he will say his own prayer at bedtime. this is last night:

"dear god, thank you for my little brother. thank you for mommy and daddy and myself. thank you for the house and the fan. the end."
how cool is i that his little brother comes first? awesome.

sometimes i am so blown away by his questions and quite frankly don't know how to respond. he asks me things like, is god inside of us? is jesus inside of us? did jesus walk on water? (i guess i should have been ready for the jesus questions since we do take him to church and to MOPS - but since i struggle with those same questions, well, it makes for intereseting convo with a 4 year old) why are the levits jewish? why aren't we jewish?

then there's the whole thing about santa clause. we went to my mother-in-laws country club to meet santa and have dinner on sunday. do i tell him thats the REAL santa? or a helper? we were telling him that sometimes santa sends a helper because he gets so busy getting ready for christmas eve. he was very adamant that santas helpers were elves. duh mommy. this whole parenting thing sure can be tricky. lately masons struggle to have control over his environment, ahem, ME, is coming out by him screaming and calling me ugly. good times.

stockings

mom, this is for you.......
those are hand needlepointed by mi madre. she spent insane amounts of time ensuring my family would have these extremely fabulous stockings, you all should be very jealous ;-)
thanks mom (please excuse the ghetto-fabulous plastic hooks, i could not find nice holders that would fit my mantle)

day 2 & gratitude friday

stephen survived his second day of mothers day out, they said he did better than on tuesday. when we were walking into the building and he saw the silly old lady with reindeer antlers on he remembered where he was and started crying. break my heart. he loved going on the buggy ride & he got to see a handbell choir. again i have to reiterate how quickly 5 hours goes by. for me, probably not so much for him.

well, not even a week open & one out of our two clients has already burned off. mike was with him yesterday morning at the house & he seemed fine, then didn't show up in the evening. this is the guy that mike has known for years. cunning, baffling, powerful. it never ceases to amaze me what this disease does to people. again it reiterates to me how much easier it is to stay sober than get sober. i am SO grateful to be where i am today. what are you grateful for?

on a side note in regards to addiction, i have been having thoughts of smoking again (because i'm a nut job! and yes i'm still nursing. shut up) but last night i got new resolve.

i love my kids. they are awesome. stephen has been more chatty lately. he LOVES to say ball, dada, drink, that, cup. now keep in mind this is largely in the language that only mommy & daddy can understand. except for ball. thats clear as day. mason uses words like frustrated, object (in regards to game playing), and now i can't think of them. but often he says things and i'm like, how old are you kid?

by myself??? in my own house???

today was stephen's first day of mothers day out. i tell you what, five hours goes QUICK! i did NOT go to the gym b/c i was obsessing about getting the house clean. so i cleaned. for three straight hours. my entire house. for now, until well, now- my house is clean. it was nice to walk in with the boys this afternoon and have it this way, even if it will be short lived.
it was really hard dropping stevie c off today. he was really excited and happy, until he realized that i would NOT be staying. when i arrived to pick him up he was crying at the door waiting for me, she promised he didn't do that ALL day. we'll try again thursday and hopefully it will get better. which intellectually i know it will but my heart sure did hurt this morning.

on the freedom house note, we have two clients. one actually PAID rent yesterday! on the first day. i am amazed. but day 1 and we already had a glitch, the gas was turned off. so no hot water, no stove. luckily the heater is electric! this will be the beginning of a long journey of a whole bunch of fun things to deal with :-)

i found out yesterday that a woman that goes to my woman's meeting on thursday's, and who happens to be a grand-sponsee, was found dead yesterday. all i know is that she was found at the bottom of her stairs with wine bottles everywhere. it made me really sad, i did not know her well at all. i know she was young, beautiful, intelligent, successful in her career and an alcoholic that could not get & stay sober. i do not know if her death was a result of her drinking, or just a tragic accident that occurred when she happened to be drunk. regardless, she is gone and does not get another chance at the life she wanted so badly. it has really made me think about how HARD it is to get sober at first, but how EASY it is really once you have some time, some relief, some tools to live by. so now its a matter of continuing to plug away one day at a time. its easy to slip into the lie that i can coast on the things i did yesterday, but its just not so. yesterday doesn't matter (yes, i can learn & grow, strengthen my spirit & my relationship with god) but if i do nothing today then i'm not moving forward.