Flowers!

I was practicing with my camera this weekend and took some really gorgeous pictures of the flowers in our garden right now. I hope you enjoy them!

YOU MUST WATCH THIS....

Absolutely inspirational, totally made my day!

First Rate

Always be a First-Rate Version of Yourself,

Instead of a Second-Rate Version of Somebody Else.

-Judy Garland

A Breakfast Party

I was looking through some of my favorite blogs when I found this over at 'Everyday Celebrating'...one of my favorite blogs. From the invites to the cake, a Breakfast Birthday Party is such a great idea! Now I want to throw one!

My Super-Amazing Baby Boy!

My goodness. I am so, so proud of my baby boy! Joseph has been having a bit of a hard time lately. It seems like we need to work even more with him on developing his self esteem. Actually, he reminds me A LOT of me when I was really young. He’s really sensitive and wears his heart on his sleeve, so it is easy to hurt his feelings. Anyway, I think because of this, he has regressed a bit in his flag football progress. It doesn’t help that this season he was moved up from the 3-4 year old class to the 5-6 year old class. He is one of the younger players, and still lacks a little focus, but he LOVES to play. Anyway, this last weekend was their first game. He was so excited and ‘wore his wheels’ that day, but, admittedly, I was a little nervous for him. I didn’t want him to get frustrated with himself for not performing. Boy was I wrong! He did an amazing job! Not only did he carry the ball for a run, albeit a short one, but HE GOT A FLAG! That is a BIG deal! As I took the photo I wondered who it was and then realized it was Joe, I started screaming and waving my hands for him. I was so happy for him and I can tell, already, that it really helped his self confidence. I just love this kid, he is so awesome!

Run, baby, run!!!

Get that flag!

Look Mom! I got the Flag!

My Birthday

For those of you that know me personally, you may be surprised to know how I spent my birthday. We went to the Riparian reserve we have here in the middle of town. Apparently it is a condition of the water treatment plant there to provide and maitain the preserve. We had no idea how huge the reserve was as we have driven by it many times thinking it was more of a park than a reserve.

Our first stop was the library which is right next door. This was the first time for the kids to go to the library, and Joe even got his own library card, he was very proud. The kids each got over ten books, Joe's were mostly Pokemon, and we have been reading some of those books each day since.

After we dropped the books off in the car we went on our little hike. Our first stop was to turtle-watch at the first pond.

Then it was on to the Dino-Dig. What a great idea! The reserve buried some dinosaur fossils under a big sand box and invite the kids to dig up the fossils. Joci is the one that first spotted the fossils where the kids, and Jon, dug.
Joe was thinking that they were keeping the dinosaurs in this shed. It was pretty funny because he seemed to be excited and terrified at the prospect.
After they dug up the dinosaur fossils we headed out for our little hike. We saw lots of ducks...
I took lots of pictures...

Joci was NOT very happy about being put up in the tree...

But, she thought it was fun to pose for this picture...
We took a couple of minutes to relax next to one of the ponds, little did we know Joci had a bad ear infection.
I took this awesome picture of a cactus blossom...

Joe was excited to find some lillypads and wanted me to take a photo of them...
It was a great little hike.
After the hike we went to my favorite Sushi place, Temari. I had a paradise roll and a pearl roll, my personal favorites. Then they gave me one of their new rolls, sorry I don't remember the name, with a little birthday candle in the wasabi. It was so much fun, even though the kids were not interested at all that night. So we were generous on the way home and they got McDonalds.
Joci is learning how to use chopsticks...
Joci liked to dip the edamme in soy sauce.

We Have a New Member of the Hooge Family!

His name is MotoMoto and he or she is a Sulcata Tortoise. The kids just love him, especially Joe. We are currently keeping him in a clean Rubbermaid box and take him out daily to play and walk around in the yard. He’s a great weed eater!

Have You Twittered Yet?

I am so into Twittering right now. If you don’t know what Twitter is, well, here we go.
Twitter has been described a number of ways.
-It’s like sending out a mass email to EVERYONE.
-It’s like a micro-blog, 140 characters or less.
-It’s better than a text, as it can reach many people at once.
-It is the new social networking phenomenon that we will all deny that we were addicted to in 5 years.
-It’s like Facebook, without all the work.
I am hoping more and more of the people that I know will sign up for Twitter, if for no other reason than to follow my tweets.
You can search for whomever you want, and there are a lot of celebrities that Tweet, too. Hey, even John McCain and Barrack Obama Tweet! Martha Stewart, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, John Mayer, and PDiddy are famous Twitterers.
If you go to this site http://twitter.com/ you can sign up and start tweeting immediately.
Even better, you can look at those that I follow and follow them as well, etc.
You can post pictures, websites that you want to share, or even videos.
It’s a lot of fun without the work.
I hope you will join me. By the way I am: @JenHooge on Twitter.

I Want a Tata, but...

Do you think they could add an air conditioner for me? Otherwise, I don't think they would even be ALLOWED to sell them here in Arizona!

I'm Living in CHAOS, Help FlyLady!

My house is in CHAOS, which in FlyLady (http://www.flylady.com/) is “Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome”. Well, that used to work for us. After all, we have pretty much told everyone we know to call first before you ‘pop in’. We used to leave the house a mess during the work week, and then scramble to make it livable during the weekend. It’s not working anymore, due to our awesome new neighbors.

I really like our new neighbors. They are really nice, they have helped us with our landscaping needs, they are our age, we’ve chatted a lot, but the biggest thing, by far, is that they also have a 3 year old girl, Jaylyn. Well, I REALLY underestimated how much that would change the dynamic around our house. Jaylyn is at our house a lot now and the kids are no longer happy with just playing in the yard. So, we have started to change our ways.

I have to admit that I really struggle with the work/home/kids/husband balance. It always seems like one of the categories is far outweighing the other. When my house is clean I feel like I’ve either neglected the kids or my own rest. When I work too much, it all gets neglected. When I focus just on the kids or, even, just myself, the house and work get neglected. Ugh!

A long time ago, before all the drama, I tried a system that the FlyLady had espoused for awhile. And, for awhile it worked. So, I am going back to her and doing my baby steps. I want to be able to have Jaylyn over, or even her parents, at any time and not cringe when they have to step around those baskets full of clean clothes.

Jon and I have talked a bit about this too. He’s been really working hard to make sure the outside is up to par with our new neighbors. After all, the guy is a landscaper.

We want the kids to always be able to bring anyone home and hang out without having to rush around and clean before they come over each time. We want to be that family that all the kids want to hang out at our house (so we can keep an eye on them).

It will certainly take some changes on our part, but I think we can do it. Wish me luck!

Pictures of our new Garden...

I finally have them! The pictures are here!

We finished planting the rest of our little Victory Garden this morning. Thanks to our new neighbor who is a Landscape Artist, who fixed all of our sprinklers, took out a dead tree stump, and even tilled my garden for me so I wouldn't have to, our garden is going to be AWESOME! Today we planted Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Sweet Peppers, Sweet Peas, more Green Onions, Radishes, Summer Squash, Zuchini, Radishes, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Beets, Carrots, and Parsnips. It's a lot, but Jon and I both have the attitude that what grows, grows. We aren't going to stress if something doesn't grow, we'll just learn from it! In our front yard we have a little flower bed, that winds around the side of the house. So, on the side I planted Sweet Onions, Green Onions, and Parsley. Then I put some Basil, Tarragon, and Sage in pots on our little front porch area. I still have a little more area to play with so I am thinking of adding a bit more in the flower beds, too. I did throw a package of wildflowers in a hard to grow area, and they have sprouted nicely next to Joci's petunias.

As you can probably tell, I am really excited. We always had a garden growing up and I loved going out daily and checking to see what had grown. Now, as an adult and a parent, I love that we can grow our own healthy food for our family.

I will keep you posted on how it all goes.

Our garden after planting everything today...

Here are the green onions we have just sprouting in

the side flower beds.

The Sweet Onions in the side flower beds...

The Sage...

The Tarragon...

The Basil...The Daffodils have bloomed...

And the Lillies are coming soon...