Thankful Thursday - I'm not Perfect

I'm not perfect the more I age and get on with my life I realize this standard of being perfect I hold myself too is an unobtainable goal. It's something that I will never reach... perfection!
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I remember way back, when I was a little shit girl I used to tell myself and my dad that I would be perfect. My life would be perfect because I would be running the show. I will do what I want my house will look the way I want and my room will have dirty clothes on the floor.

Any of you have memories like that as a child?


I'm pretty sure I reminded my dad everyday that I would be better then him because I wouldn't have as many strict rules as he would and my kids would love me more for it. Something to that effect.


I think it is hard for us to realize that we aren't something we thought we should be.
* I'm not perfect mom
* I'm not a perfect person
* I'm not a perfect wife
* I'm not a perfect cook

Anyway, let me just say, "I'm not Perfect!"

There are some days where I come home from work and I don't do anything. I mean no cleaning, no cooking, nothing. I feel ok with it, but sometimes the hubs isn't ok with it. My daughter wants to play with me so bad that she will get on the couch and jump on me. I then get mad and tell her that she can't jump on people and put her on time out. I guess that isn't really fair, because I shouldn't even let my daughter get to the point to where she has to jump on me and hit my face to get me to play with her.

Someday's I just want to be able to lay on the couch and watch a stupid show by myself for a few minutes. Or just want to crawl in bed and go to sleep because of the day I had that day I want to just forget it. Please know that this isn't an everyday occurrence just for the record.

I love my daughter and she is growing up so fast and I want to be the perfect person, mother and wife, but sometimes being perfect just isn't something that is a reachable goal and I should live my life the best I can possible.

Even if.... I'm not perfect!
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What are you thankful for this week?

54. Realizing I'm not perfect, and I'm ok with it.

55. Fall Weather

56. Pumpkin spice latte's reappearance at Starbucks

57. My Daughter's smile

58. Scrap booking classes

59. Diet coke

60. The weekends with my family

61. Sunshine 

62. My perfect life the way it is

Hump Day

Happy Hump Day Reader's

Representing the hawks at work

My BigMac Painting

Picasso at work

Potty training take 2

A long time ago I mentioned that I was going to start potty training my daughter. Well, that just didn't happen the way I wanted it to. Not only was she not interested in potty training, I just didn't give her the time and effort the whole thing deserved.

The last couple of days and over the weekend I've been really good with her. She can't really tell me that she has to go potty quite yet until she is already going. (go figure.. right?) :) I ask her every 20 or so minutes if we need to go sit on the potty and she will either tell me yes or no. For the most part she will tell me yes and we will go and sit down and she will go pee. Which has been so awesome. However, today she went poop in the potty. I was so excited I think I scared her.

At this point in the potty training I'm trying to make a decision at this point to just throw away all diapers in the house and just go for it. Or, if I should keep the diapers around for awhile for like the car, sleeping, and or longer outings such as shopping and such.

Does anyone have suggestions for me that has gone through it or going through it now? 

What worked for you when you potty trained your tot? 

What didn't work? 

Am I crazy for wanting to throw away all the diapers?

I started a sticker chart for her in the bathroom, so every time she goes to the bathroom and she can get up and stick a sticker on a piece of paper in front of the toilet. Although, she has more fun flushing the toilet then putting a sticker on the wall.

Happy Tuesday

Firewood is a man's job

So, as you know I live in the mountains and all of fall is the preparation of our wood for our wood burning fire place. The hubs stated awhile back that inside the house is a woman's job. (Who hasn't heard that from a man's mouth.) Anyway, he told me that since he is dealing with cutting, splitting the wood that I can't ask him to do any chores in the house. Ok, that seems fair right?!?

Only Half of the wood we will need this winter

The other day after he realized how much wood their was to stack, he has changed his mind. He told me, " you know you are going to be the one helping me stack this, it's going to be a family event." (What the Frack!)

Not only now do I have to clean the house and clean his pee pee off the toilet, I now have to stack wood.


 I simply just said, "I don't think so, wood is a man's job."

Home Tour Friday

So I see a lot of people posts photos of their houses and what us mom's live and work with on a daily basis. I moved into our new house about a month ago. It's pretty much put together, but there are some things that aren't unpacked yet. I've been intimidated to upload photos of my house, because everyone's houses seem to be so well organized and well decorated. Anyway, I'm going to share anyway so all my followers can see my house and give me some pointers and ideas for my house. 

Living Room/Dinning

Front Yard

Kitchen 

Living Room

Mackenn'a Bathroom

Guest Room/Office/Sewing Scrapbooking Room

(Sorry For the mess) This room I still need to figure out what I'm doing in here.

Another angle of the Guest Room/Office/ Scrap Booking area

Hallway

My Bedroom :)

Opps I need to Finish laundry

Entry way and Front Door

Kitchen (Full View)

Mackenna's Room

This is what a 2 year old's Room looks like. It's impossible

to keep clean. Mackenna is actually is taking a nap in crib while I was taking photos :)

Thanks for taking the Tour. Sorry for some of the messes. 

I'm a procrastinator

Ever feel like life is passing you by so fast you can't remember last weekend, a few days ago, yesterday, let alone last night. I've been so focused on being organized and having a clean house and doing and doing. I never set time aside for myself or just to be stupid with my family and laugh. I feel like I need to have schedules, budgets, calendars blah blah. At the end of the day I'm the one exhausted, tried and stressed not anyone else. 

hmmmm.. I'm most be a crazy bhatch sometimes. I feel like I'm loosing it and will have a mental break down if I don't just S.T.O.P and really try to capture the things that I'm missing. 

For example, I work 6-3 so yesterday I was at home at around 3:15 and from the minute my friend left that watches my daughter I went straight to my daughter's room and started cleaning. I didn't stop cleaning until 8:30pm last night. Ok, I'm a fatty and I stopped for 20 minutes to eat dinner. 

By the time I was actually done and in bed, it was 9pm. I've tried cleaning schedule's and calendar reminders and nothing seems to work. I wait for the last minute for everything. I mean EVERYTHING!

This week I'm going to really focus, I can't keep procrastinating anything, because I'm going to fall apart with stress and anxiety. I've been a procrastinator since I was born I think. I've been real good at it, because I work well under pressure and even better. My best work and creativity happens when I'm crammed for time. 

I'm going to try and eliminate some extra things for awhile and doing extra's and focus on the home front and my family. Otherwise I'm going to Fracken loose it. 

How do you mom's out there deal with all the things that are on your plate?

What tools do you use to help you remember everything?

My Budget Plan, It might work for you

I know once you here the word's Debt and Finance's we run like the plague is over taking our world. It's the one thing that can end marriages, relationships and your overall composure. I'm going to start posting my new debt and budget regime on Wednesday's because I'm over wordless Wednesday's. They are boring the Frack out me. 

So, the hubbs and I make some real decent money. You go through the motions and then at the end of the year, you look at your income level and wonder to yourself where the hell did all that money go. When you start to think about it, you become baffled. There are times when I'm rolling in it and embarrassingly enough their are times when I'm flat ass broke. I'm sure we can all relate to this roller coaster bank account balance. I'm tired of just paying bills and then spending the rest after bills on whatever we feel like for the remainder of the time till we get paid. It's a waste on nothing but bullshit. To be quite Blunt. 

So, instead of arguing and yelling at each other the crap that we both buy, or who went to lunch and how much I spend at whatever, I decided to make a very distinct budget and cut out extra spending for now. We have credit card debt, like every damn person on the planet. It's not an obscene amount, but its decent. 

The Budget on Paper:

1. Made excel spreadsheet with all our bills and the amount's they are (including their due dates).

2. Added other expenses, like how much we SHOULD be spending on groceries, household items, entertainment, Beer fund, and Eating out, Gas, Daycare, kid stuff. 

(Beer Fund WTF!, I know I have to give the hubs a budget for beer, or there is no motivation or interest in any of the overall budget. It's a tactic to get the men gender to listen. It's worked so far.)

3. Figure out the amount of your paychecks for the month. 

Savings:

1. You need to save at least $1,000 in your saving's account before you can do the actual budget plan I'm doing. So, the amount after everything is budgeted.. including: bills and expenses for the month are paid for, the left over monies get deposited into your saving's account. 

2. Once you have reached the goal of $1,000 in saving's you then take that left over amount after your expenses and bills are planned out and that that amount goes to paying off your debt.  (if you have any.) If you have no debt, then you are a god, and I want to know how you do it. 

3. You keep doing this until your debt is paid off. Phew! After the debt is paid off then you go back to saving's. But you don't have to do the whole amount, but set an certain amount per month to send to saving's. 

Cash & Envelopes:

1. Make envelopes for all of your expenses. 

Ex.  Envelopes 

a. Gas

b. Groceries

c. Household's

d. Ian's Beer Fund (in my case)

e. Entertainment

f. Eating out

2. Once you have made the envelopes you pull out the cash for each expense and put it into the envelope. 

(Take the figure from your budget plan. Since we get paid twice a month, I take that amount and divide it in half and that is the amount I get in cash every paycheck.)

3. Once your envelopes are loaded with the cash, the rest of the money in your account is for the bills you budgeted for. Then you use the cash in the envelopes for your other expenses.

4. Once the cash runs out it's gone, if there is left over cash, you leave it and then your expense envelope has more the next time and so on.

Ok, If you are still reading at this point, you made it through my training sesh. I'm sorry, but there is a lot of wordiness to it when you try and explain it. It's really easy. If you are really interested in trying comment back or if it's private email me @ kristina.j.ruth@gmail.com 

My new motto is eff the credit card companies, because they don't care about me. :)

Happy Saving's! 

Tada! The Wedding Photos

So, back in august I said that I was in a wedding of my good friend Autumn. She got her photos yesterday and I wanted to share them with all of you.

Caution: I look like I'm the whitest FRACKEN person on the planet in these photos. The

dress didn't really fit my huge ASS boobs and well I don't know why, but I'm squinting in all of the 

photos take of me. Dear Lord, I'm sorry. 

Autumn and I. You can even see where the makeup stops on my neck. Eff. 

Ian and the Groom Tyson. 

The Wedding Party

Look at my face. WTF. It was cold and that's all I can think of. 

The Married Couple

Autumn and her Sister Dawn. Dawn is so awesome. She had the balls to tell

her sister that our dresses were ugly. hahaha! I love u dawn. 

Well, here are the photos, enjoy!

Mackenna 2 Years and 2 months

Mackenna Jane is 2 years and 2 months old today. I can't believe it's 

been two months since her 2nd Birthday. 

Weight: 34 lbs

Height: TBD

Food: Mac and Cheese, Bananas, some meats, Yogurt

(she has become very picky already)

Words: Hi, bye, mommy,mum, daddy, thank you, welcome, kitty, cow,

home, sky, airplane, bath, teet, eyes, nose, ears, it's ok, uh oh.

(so many more)

Sings the ABC's all the way through

counts 1-10

Sings twinkle twinkle

Children grow up way too fast. I always feel bad and sad back in the days, when she was younger I would wish that she would hurry up and go to the next stage, because it would be easier. I guess just easier for me. Now that I look back at it, why did I rush it. Now, my daughter is 2 years old and all I can think about is doing it again. Oh boy, the expense of another child, are your shittin me. I'm am crazy that I have baby fever right now. Maybe so. 

ACL & LCL & Vicodin

So, due to a knee injury yesterday and the amounts of Vicodin that is consuming my blood stream I'm not even going to attempt to write anything else on my blog today, but this. Hopefully I will be back tomorrow.

I tore my ACL and LCL in a soccer game yesterday. So lot's of pain today.

All about me

So I was doing some thinking and I realized that everyone reads my rambling's that I go on and on about like being a mom, work, school etc. Well I realized that I really want to get to know the bloggers a little bit more that I talk to on a more regular basis. I'm going to give this a shot and tell all you lovely mom's a out there a little bit more about me. 

Ok, in case some of you don't know my name is Kristina. If you didn't know that by now, then maybe you should un-follow me. I'm kidding. :) Anyway, where was I, oh ya my name. I live in Truckee, California 15 minutes from Lake Tahoe. I live in the sierra mountains where the summer's are hot and the winter's are ass cold with several feet of snow. It's the best of both world's and I love living where I live now. 

I grew up in Seattle, Washington. The stigma city where it rains all the time and everyone is depressed and runs around listening to grunge music. It's really not that bad. I love Seattle and it's a great city. There is so much to do in the area not to mention our sport's teams, like the mariners that I have never won a world series or made it more than the second round anyway. But, hey! we have an awesome stadium that is fairly new. Is anyone dying to go to Seattle yet?!? It was a great place to grow up. 

Let's see how did I end up in Truckee. My dad's sister lived in Lake Tahoe and Truckee for a while and I've been visiting since I was around 13 several times to go snowboarding. Let's just say once I graduated High School I was Truckee, California bound!

I started college at 18, I'm still attending, but that is way besides the point HA! I'm going to school for my BA in Business Finance and a minor in Accounting. My plan is to finish before I'm 30, please god! When I was 20 I learned that I was pregnant with my now 2 year old daughter Mackenna. I took 6 months off of school after she was born and went back once she was six months old. Anyway, all this talk about school and when I'm going to finish is boring me. 

Let's see what else. I've been working for the same company for the last 4 years. Love it and the people I work with. It's a place I enjoy coming to everyday. I love to scrapbook, read, snowboard, go snowmobiling and hanging out and watching a good movie. I'm 23 years old now and just enjoying my life with my little family in the mountains. 

I want to get to know you. Tell us about yourself, brag to me if you must. HA!
Don't forget to link up with me so I can see your about me post!

New .Com Domain

Please note that my new blog URL is MountainMum.com

In the next couple of week's I will be transitioning the name of my blog to 

Mountain Mum

Please be patient with me and make sure that you are still a follower of the Mountain Mum. 

Thankful Thursday

This week I'm Thankful for the help that I've been receiving with Mackenna while I'm in school this

semester. I just want to give a little shout out.

Ian - Thanks for taking on the mom and dad role Monday-Thursday. Feeding, bathing and putting Mackenna

to sleep. It's a big help, and I know she loves being with daddy. 

Mom - Thanks for taking Mackenna @ your work for a half hour on Thursdays till Ian is off. 

Drae - My awesome brother, thanks for watching Mackenna on Tuesday night's and actually staying the night. It helps a lot. 

I really thought that I was going to be able to post regularly and still work full time and go

to school 4 days a week. I was wrong. I'm thankful for my readers this week for still 

stopping by even if my posts are ill regular. Thanks for sticking with me. 

54.. Mackenna's Daddy

55. Sleeping in a comfortable bed

56. Having tons of firewood for the winter

57. 35 degree morning's, snow is coming

58. Living in the mountains

59. Friends and New Friends

60. Great job

61. Still alive after 3 weeks of school

62. That Ian still loves me :)

Blog Design Giveaway by Happy House Wife Designs

The Happy House Wife Giveaway

This is my biggest giveaway yet! I am offering TWO blog designs! Yes, TWO! What the winner will get is their blog designed in a Halloween theme and then once Halloween is over they will get their blog redesigned with a kit from Scrapkitchen Designs! What could be better than that!? 

The Halloween kit is from one of my favorite designers which you can find here - Libby Weifenbach. She has crazy talent and wonderful kits that I just can't get enough of! 

Here are the two kits that will be used - 

What you will get (with both designs) 

- a custom background 

- a custom header 

- a blog button with the "grab box" 

- choice of one or two sidebars 

- up to 10 sidebar tabs 

- signature 

- post divider 

- two sidebar pictures with frames 

How to enter 

- leave a comment on here telling what your favorite candy is 

- follow me on Twitter 

- follow Happy Housewife Designs on Facebook 

- do a post about this giveaway 

- tweet about this giveaway (can be done daily) and each Tweet will count as a entry 

- by putting my button on your blog 

Make sure to leave a separate comment for each of the above entries! If you are already following on Twitter/Facebook leave a comment just letting me know! 

Deadline to enter 

The last day for entries will be September 25th. The winner announced on September 26th! 

If you are the winner you MUST reply within three days otherwise a different winner will be picked. You are also stating that you have read and agreed to my giveaway TOU which you can find here - Giveaway TOU

Check our her Blog site: happyhousewifedesign

Wordless Wednesday.. Sort of.

Traffic... blah. The commute to school that is a little over 30 minutes can be 

brutal at times and test ones patience. Then after they have finished the construction

I can deal with driving with other's that can't drive in the snow. 

Two season construction and winter where I live. 

Happy Friday

With another week of school done, this weekend I can't wait to hang with my

girl Mackenna. Just me and her, and maybe daddy :) 

Stayed tunned tonight for my meal plan for next week. I'm going to 

start doing them on Friday's. It's just easier. 

Oh my, I downloaded the photos from the wedding I was in last week, and will maybe add them

to my meal plan post this evening. 

Make it a fun Friday! 

I'm really pissed :)

So, I rarely read news online or even watch it. I refuse because everything is so negative, blown way out of proportion and it just makes me depressed. Although, once in a while I pull up cnn.com, not my favorite source for the news, but I like how the top news story are just easy to access on the home page for easy quick viewing.

With 9/11 coming up, there is a lot flying through the headlines. One that particularly hit me was the fact that a man, sorry (minister), in Florida will be conducting a burning of Quran's on the anniversary date of September 11th. I'm not judgmental at first, but I was interested in what this guys ultimatum was to do this on a very highly sensitive day. 

I don't want to be too direct and touch on other's feelings on the thing, however I will say this, this is the most absurd thing I've heard of. This man is endangering our troops, that are still fighting for us over the attacks 9 years ago. He is also endangering the American people.

Anyway, I'm sorry for the rant and the post. I guess sometimes us mom's need to rant and rave about something and this is mine today :)

Wordless Wednesday

I love to play outside with Mackenna. I hope the snow stays away for a little longer than 

normal this year. She calls her car her "Beep, Beep"