Spontaneous Water Fun

When we were looking for our house, one of the things on our "must have" list was a big backyard to entertain and have a place for our kids to play. There is no better way for our kids to keep cool this summer than spontaneous water fights, playing with their water park pool, and sliding on their Slip 'n Slide!

Their dad was watering the plants when they got in the way!

Slip 'n Slide!

Happy Summer!

Warming up our home - Catch up edition

We purchased our house in October of last year and we've been slowly trying to make it the home of our dreams.  So far the past 9 months, we've made our home functional, but it lacked warmth and some color. I've lately been on a mission to change this since I'm also on maternity leave. I wish I had known that I'd be blogging about our home decor journey because I would have done a better job taking "before" pictures.You'll quickly see that even though I said that I wanted to add some color, I still gravitate to black, white, and grey! Everything's still a work in progress, but here is what we've done so far:

Kitchen Decor

I've been staring at the wasted space above our kitchen cabinets and decided to add some decor there. It's also functional because the basket holds our excess spices.

Speaking of spices, I've been super annoyed at how cluttered my cabinets are so I purchased a metal magnetic board and some magnetic spice jars. I simply mounted the board on the inside of the cabinets with mounting tape. So far it's holding up. I need to purchase more jars because I have a ton of spices I still need to organize.

Entryway

We have a small entryway and we don't wear shoes in the house, so we always have a clutter of shoes near the door.  It drove me nuts so we got the Hemnes shoe cabinet from Ikea to create an entryway as well as to hide the shoes.  I was worried to lose space in our already narrow entryway, but with this cabinet, we actually gained space by putting our shoes inside. They also happened to have the color in a dark stained grey which matched our kitchen cabinets perfectly. I love the way that it looks now!

The hubby's step-dad drew this picture! How cool that we get to show this off!

Living Area

Our living area looked so boring and I felt like we needed lots of help to warm it up.

We went to Home Goods and bought a mirror and some stuff to add to our coffee table. And with that, it made our home not look as boring!  The walls are still a work in progress, but we're super picky about what we put up. So until we find the perfect thing to add to our walls, we'll stick with this.

Our media center also needed some love, so we decided to buy the Lack wall shelf from Ikea to place above the t.v.

We removed the antenna and mounted it behind the t.v. Don't mind the kids' mess!

We bought more plants and frames from Home Goods (I swear I live at that store now!) and now all we have to do is add some pictures to the frames.

So that's where we're at. Hopefully we find art pieces or something else that we like so we can finish these rooms up. It's been fun playing interior designer and I can't wait to see our progress!

Mom Guilt/Boss Guilt

Today I went back to work just for the day because we had our annual planning meeting for our team and my boss wanted me to be part of the conversation.  I appreciate that he asked me even though I'm still on maternity leave because I know he values my input. In exchange for coming in, he's giving me an extra day on the back end when my leave ends so it's all good.  I also actually love my job and love the people I work with so I was looking forward to seeing everyone and having conversations that didn't revolve around cartoons or me yelling at the kids to clean up their mess.

It was an all-day meeting and I left the day feeling excited to come back and get to work. Everyone kept asking me if I am ready to come back and if I'll be sad to leave my kids.  I half-joked that going to work is a "break" from my kids -- I can take breaks, actually sit down and have a lunch, or close my office door to take an uninterrupted nap. I truthfully told everyone I was ready and excited to hit the ground sprinting.

And then I came home...

I came home and asked the kids to recap their day for me for the first time in four and a half months since I've been on maternity leave. It was then that it hit me that this would be part of my routine when I fully go back to work -- I would no longer just be part of their every day, I would MAYBE get the Cliffs Notes version (try getting all the details from a 5 year old).  This is where the "mom guilt" hit me -- the guilt that I will no longer be physically there for my kids all day, every day. It also made me sad to lose this time that I've been able to spend with them -- the time that I joked about needing a break from.

And then I got a second wave of guilt... I guess you could call it "Boss Guilt."

When I started my maternity leave, I left in the midst of our busy season so it was already really hard for me to leave.  In fact, I still checked in during my leave to make sure everyone was still sane. Things continued to move forward while I was gone, but after hearing about some of the difficulties and frustrations that happened during my absence, I can't help but feel guilty for "abandoning" my team to bond with my baby. Ridiculous, I know.

As I'm going through this journey as a working mom of three, I'm realizing that it is impossible to be everything to everyone, but that doesn't stop me from trying!  I need to remind myself that I am truly blessed with a beautiful family and an awesome job that I love and it is because I actually care about these things that I worry about giving my all to each. Hopefully as I continue to navigate this journey, I will be able to give myself some slack.

Let's try this again

This is my millionth time starting a blog. I've always wanted to start a blog to document our family adventures, but I always give up because I'm never consistent with it. I also put too much pressure on myself to write a whole bunch when a few words or one picture will do.  Hopefully I can ease up on myself and just keep blogging! I guess we'll see...

So for my first, no-pressure blog entry, here is a picture of my kids -- the ones that fill my heart with so much love, but also drive me completely insane -- I wouldn't have it any other way.