Noah's Potato Head Playhouse Fun

     My grandson has started some potato head videos on youtube. They are cute and fun. I noticed that he watches a lot of videos of kids just playing with their toys and decided he might as well have some fun with it.

    Noah is very outgoing and a little theater kid. He is not at all shy so had no trouble with his video's. He had a lot of fun making them.

     I hope you enjoy them. The first one is from some Disney Potato Head parts my sons and I got several years ago at DCA. You paid one price and filled the back of the spud with different parts and also put as many as your could in your box.

     The other video is of Noah's Playskool Pirate Spud.

     The last video is of Noah's Potato Head story. There will be more stories to come...

Mr Potato Head Disney Spuds

Mr. Potato Head Pirate Spud

Mr Potato Head Disney Story by Noah



   

Look at Yourself Through Others Eyes:The Eyes of Love

We are always hardest on ourselves, at least I am. I am never good enough, I am never satisfied with how I look. I envision myself looking like I did when I was young and pretty but then I look in the mirror and no longer see that person. I look at old pictures and see pretty but the ones that are taken in the present day make me want to cry and shy away from the camera. But people who love me tell me I am beautiful. I think to myself when they say that "are you blind?". But as I have been thinking about this lately I realize that they see me through the eyes of love.

When I was a young child and my grandma was not even as old as I am now I thought she was beautiful Of course she was "old" to me but always beautiful. As she aged, and I did too, I still saw her as beautiful. I still saw her in the same way at 80 as I did when she was in her 40's. She was beautiful to me, even in pictures when I look back she is beautiful. I remember her saying she looked old and ugly in pictures but she did not care. She smiled and she was happy and to those who loved her she was beautiful until the day she passed away.

It is the same with my own mom. When I was a kid I always thought she was one of the most beautiful women I knew. As she aged and said how old and ugly she looks I still saw, and still see, a beautiful woman. That is who I see when I look at my mom. She might see old and ugly but that is not who she is, it is not what those who love her see.

As I was saying how I wished I was pretty again I had a friend tell me that I was still beautiful. I told him that he was wrong and had not seen me in a while.He told me that it is not up to me to say whether or not I am beautiful.Others see me that way and I don't have the right to tell them they are wrong, that me beautiful is not what they see. That made so much sense because those who love me see me through different eyes. Those who love me see me through the eyes of love. This was comforting and made me realize that we are hardest on ourselves in every aspect of life even our appearance.

I finally realize that those who say I am still beautiful are not lying, they still see me that way. They look at me through eyes of love. So I am going to work hard on looking at myself through the eyes of those who love me. It will take some time to change my mindset but I need to be on my way, it may take some time but I need to look at myself through others eyes, to look at myself through the eyes of love.

Don't Let Difficult Times Define Your Life

It is sad that people let their struggles in life guide them and define their life....granted there is a time to be sad, upset and annoyed but don't let it define who you are and guide your life. Overcome it! Don't waste all of your time being upset, sad and annoyed. Get out there, do things and enjoy life!

This past year has been one of the most difficult times in my life. I will not say the most difficult because I have had some very difficult times but it has been very challenging. In the past I have had a good support system at my disposal. This time I had a support system but for the most of the time it was from afar so I had to deal with things on my own. It was not easy.

I moved to a new town, started a new job with pretty much no support system at all. No one to tell me things would be ok when I felt down. No one to tell me that I should not give up. Yes I had family and friends from afar and am so thankful for that but sometimes you need that support system where you are.
So when I say I did not have a support system in this post, I mean one right there, one to lean on where I was.

The entire move was not what I thought it would be. The cost was way more than I imagined leaving me in the hole and broke for quite some time.

The job was definitely not what I thought it would be. I did not make friends right away like i had in the past. I have never had trouble making friends but I did in this new place that I was hoping to call home.

I moved where my oldest son is and rented a home with him for a while thinking that we would do things together but, really that is unrealistic and I understand his need to have his own life but it was hard at first not being a huge part of that life. He does include me sometimes and that is amazing but not as much as I had hoped for at first. This would make me sad.

I have friends and some family in the new city area but the distance made it harder than I had thought. They are all at least an hour away from me so we have to really make plans to be able to spend time together which is difficult when we all have different schedules.

Things back home with my adult child that was left there were not great and my home there was not being taken care of either which was costing me money as well.

There were many times in the beginning that I just wanted to crawl in bed and stay there, weekends I did not want to do anything except feel sorry for myself because nothing was going as I had hoped. Things were desperate and dismal. I felt alone, lonely and defeated.

I did not give into those feelings though, I tried and tried to make plans on weekends when I did not work, If I could not find anyone to do things with I did things alone which was something new for me. Granted I was used to doing things on my own but I usually had my kids with me so was never really alone. All of the sudden I was alone, just me. I did not like it, but I did it.

I finally realized that my son needed his own life and did not let him actually living it hurt me anymore I simply tried to find one of my own in this new home. For a long time it was not working well and I really wanted to give up but,I kept going...

Work because progressively worse, you would think things would get better but they did not. ( the job is a later blog) I cried at work, I cried when I got home at night and I cried before I went. I would drive to work fighting back tears. I wanted to stay in bed and cry all day long but knew that I could not do that. I signed a contract and needed the job. There were many times though that I considered just throwing in the towel.

Things in Colorado also were not getting better, they were getting worse. Money was also getting progressively worse too. I felt lost, discouraged and extremely worried!

Instead of being depressed though I would find simple things to do such as go to the store after work and just walk around. I would also still find things to do on the weekends even if they were alone. I did not give myself time to feel sad.

Finally I did make a couple of friends at my new home and that made things much easier. I did lean on my support system in Colorado and New Mexico more too as well as the family I have on the other side of the city.

Now I am doing better, the job is over, I do things with friends sometimes, I have made it a point to get together with my cousin on the other side of the city once in a while...every month or two which helps a lot. My friend who lives next door is a great source of help too. Before work was done I had a support system which helped me make it through the difficult year.

I do get worried and distressed because the job hunt is not going well at all. My youngest kid has decided to no longer have anything to do with me. There are days when I want to just give up but, I am not going to let these difficult times define me. I am going to live life, enjoy things and move forward. I can't imagine how life would be if I had given into those difficult times.

My main point is that life can be hard, there are times you just want to give into the difficult times but, don't! Find ways to make it better, and if you can't make it better just keep doing things to keep busy so you don't have time to dwell on the things that are wrong with life. Don't let the difficult times define you, they are difficult times, not who you are.

Moments Become Memories, Make Each Moment Memorable

     Looking back on my childhood I do not remember

the things my mom bought me. Well I do, but those things do not stand out in my mind as memorable. When my kids used to talk to me about memories they did not talk about the things they got, they talked about the memories we made. Some of them were even memories made out of negative moments.

     I remember when I was a kid my mom would make me clothes for my dolls. I remember her making them and thinking how special I felt that my mom took the time to sew doll clothes for me.

     As years pass by I recall less and less from my younger days but some memories do still stand out. I remember the times I traveled with my entire family  and the fun we had together. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and I would go on vacations together, camping and we had many gatherings at grandma and grandpas home. Those memories are some I hold close and dear to my heart.

    In my teen years and early adult years I visited my grandparents and remember playing marbles. Some of my happiest memories are of my grandpa and I teaming up and beating my mom and my grandma.

     Of course there are so many more fond memories from my childhood, those are just a few.

     My kids told me that they remember all the times they spent with their great grandma, grandma and me. They remember the fun we had going to Disneyland. The times we went to the park and they played and even the memories of us being stranded for hours on the freeway. They have talked about fond memories such as those. I am sure they have many more.

     When my kids were little I tried to make our time together memorable. I spent time with them so that they would look back on those memories fondly. Sometimes it was simply reading a book at the end of the day, the traditions we created at Christmas time and the moments that we just were together.

     I now have a young grandson who I am making what I hope are memorable moments. I enjoy spending time with him, reading to him and just being with him. I hope he looks back someday and remembers those times with grandma as fondly as I remember mine with my grandma and my kids remember with theirs.

    There are negative things in life that do make it difficult sometimes but I think those memorable times are the ones that we hold closest to our heats and at the end of the day those will be the times we cherish most of all.
   
      Every moment can't be memorable,there are some you simply forget and there are some you want to forget but it is important to make more memorable moments with those that you love than just moments in time.