keepin' up with the joneses...: April 2010

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

HOW do you say no?

I am so excited to be BLOGGING again (rather than facebooking) and I am very anxious to post this "topic" on here for you, my good friends, to read and help me figure out! Since almost ALL of you have children (and many of them in the same age group as mine), I'm SURE you've all encountered this problem before...or will at some point soon.
So here it is:
HOW do you say "No, my child is not allowed to go to your house"?

Here's the deal: When Brooklyn was about 5 or 6, she started having ( and getting invited to) sleepover's at friends houses. Mostly from church but occasionally from school. Everything was good and fine and we never had any problems.

But NOW...she is 9 and that means that (some) girls that age are starting to become interested in things like:
using the computer
BOYS
make-up
dressing "sexy"
music videos
"older" movies
saying grown-up phrases (like "freakin" and "What the heck")
hip-hop music (think black-eyed-peas, Pink, Ludacris, etc.)
daring each other to do/say things...
ETC...

Apparently the days of playing Barbies with your friends, watching the Parent Trap and playing MASH on scrap paper are long gone. (**actually Brooklyn still loves her Barbies...but now she cuts their hair and "colors" it funky colors like pink and purple and cuts their clothes to make them "cooler" (which I interpret as "sexy". ugh!..and she wouldn't be CAUGHT DEAD playing Barbies in front of her friends.)

Anyway, there are a couple of our friends that she spends the night with that have daughters (and morals) that I JUST LOVE and Brooklyn being around them is a WONDERFUL influence on her.
However...(and here is the issue)
There are a couple of girls that she has spent the night with/gone over for playdates with...that all of the above list have been done and she comes home with this smart-alec attitude and sassy-mouth and acting like she is "entitled" to whatever she wants. She also suddenly knows the words to songs I would NEVER want her to know when she gets home and is usually covered in make-up and ink. :-(
What's even sadder...is that some of these little girls even go to our church and I know their parents. Eeek!

A while back (after a bad experience where we let her sleep-over at someones house from school that we didn't know) we made the rule up that she can't spend the night with anyone unless we know them. And that worked for a while...but now I'm gonna have to "tighten up the reins" even more. So how do I say "no" to people who she's already spent the night with?
I'm sure honesty might work in SOME cases...but I can just tell you that there is one or two of these families that I am just NOT going to sit down and have a talk with about this.
Is there any good way to back out of a friendship?
Even Brooklyn herself has admitted that she feels "wrong" when she's there and they're doing things that she knows I wouldn't approve of. She recognizes the uncomfortable feeling (THANK YOU HOLY SPIRIT) of being in a place/doing something that is not good or glorifying to God. PRAISE THE LORD that she has a good relationship with Jesus, even at the young age of 9. She has a tough exterior, but inside she is PURE GOLD--soft and sweet and precious as they come. She wants to please the Lord always. (*almost makes me cry happy tears!)
Anyway, if any of you have any suggestions about this, I would LOVE to hear them.....

FURTHERMORE....oh my gosh...what would I feel/think if this were someone else talking and it was MY DAUGHTER who they thought was the bad influence? wow....
OUCH!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Happy Birthday Matthew Paul!

Today is Matt's 34th birthday! I will be taking lots of pics throughout the day and adding them to this post, but here are a couple I snapped of him last week during one of Brooklyn's softball games. WHAT A HUNK!

Lastly, here is a pic of the kids with the snowman we built the last time we had snow. I took all these pictures with my phone and now I finally figured out how to upload them to my computer, so that's why I'm just now posting them.

Welcome to the world little baby!!

When Brooklyn was 3, we decided to get her a horse. A friend of ours had a female yearling for sale that seemed sweet-tempered and was within our price range, so we bought her. Brooklyn named her Girlfriend and as she's grown, we've come to love her.
A couple of years ago (when Brooklyn was probably about 6 or 7), my dad (who takes care of Girlfriend for us since he has the big barn) decided to sell her. My mom, knowing the trauma/drama it would create when Brooklyn found out, called me while we were at the mall to tell me that dad was selling her. When I told Brooklyn, it was an all-out sob-fest right in the middle of Dillards. I've rarely seen that girl cry her eyes out like she did that day.
I called my mom back and asked if there was ANY WAY we could stop the sale and explained how upset Brooklyn was.
As soon as my dad heard about the "drama", he backed out of the sale.
(I should probably tell you that Matt and I had told him that since he takes care of her and feeds her, etc. that she was really his horse now. It was only right for him to have the right to do with her what he wanted since he takes care of her 100% of the time....also fyi: my parents live next door to us.)
Anyway, thankfully, he/we kept her and we've known since that day that she would be in our family for ever. Here's a pic of me kissing her on the nose. She is SUCH a sweetie!
Today, on April 26th, 2010 (Matt's 34th birthday), she gave birth (at 4 am) to her first baby! We've been looking forward to this (especially Brooklyn) for almost a year now and how exciting that it happened on Matt's b-day!
Here are a few pics. I got the kids out of bed at 6:30 am (when the baby was 2 1/2 hrs old) to go out to the barn to see them.

We all got to pet the baby but it was an especially special moment for Brooklyn!
While I'm at it, here are a few more pics of our animals and the "wild" animals we have around here:
That first pic is cute little Kinley looking out of the car door at me. She hates for me to get out and leave her in there!
Next is big ole' Sam. He actually celebrated his 11th birthday yesterday (April 25th).
The 3rd pic is of a gopher that my dad killed. They are EVERYWHERE out here. We HATE them! They eat our vegetables in the garden and make little dirt piles everywhere! GRRrrrr!
The last pic is a turtle that was right out in the road in front of our house. It was BIG, and look at that TAIL!

Monday, April 19, 2010

We've got Balls!

Softball and baseball pretty much run our lives at the moment. For the next 10 weeks, we have anywhere from 3-6 baseball/softball games PER WEEK! (and that's not counting practices!!) Even though we are thoroughly enjoying this...I'm so glad it only lasts for a few months of the year!Here are a few pics I took of the kids over the last week or so. Grant REFUSES to stand still and let me get a good picture of him...so I had to sneak in some when he wasn't looking! ha ha
Brooklyn will gladly pose for me anytime she sees the camera pointed in her direction! :o)
This is one of Brooklyn with her friend Maddie (our homerun hitter!)

And Grant...not the best pictures...but I had to take what I could get!

...trying to run away from getting a picture taken! HA! I still gotcha dude!

And one for your viewing enjoyment---mine and Matt's backsides! ha ha... We were scrambling to cook dinner one night after a softball game and Brooklyn grabbed the camera and snapped our pic. Why I put it on here, I have no idea.

Monday, April 05, 2010

too many?

Apparently I put up soooo many pictures (all in individual posts) that you can't even see them all on this front page...nor do you get to see the post I did explaining them. Soo....you'll have to get to the bottom and click on "older posts" to see the rest and read about our trip!
Thanks for looking/reading.... :o)