Rebecca's Nicknames

I was thinking this morning about all the things we call Becca, and I remembered that I once did a post about our family nicknames.  So this is Becca's nickname post.

• Becca - I think everyone can tell that we call her "Becca" a lot.
• Beccaroni - Brian called her this a few times when she was younger, and we all thought it was funny.
• Beckers
• Becca Boo / Becky Boo 
• Becky - Brian's dad is the only one who calls her Becky, and I think it's kinda fun that he wants to be different on that account.
• Bucky - This is what my niece, Eliza, calls Rebecca.  Not on purpose, I think.
• Beautiful Burping Baby Becca Boo - This is what Ethan introduced her as when he took her to show and tell for "B" week at Kindergarten.
• Baby Skaa - Ethan calls her "Baby Skaa" for some reason.  He came up with it all on his own, and he says it in a funny way.  Alyssa doesn't like it, and it drives her crazy!
• Becca Lynn
• Baby Girl
• Pretty Girl
• It's You! - Every day when Brian comes home from work, Becca and I go to the garage to meet him.  The second his head is above the door, he says, "It's you!" and Becca smiles so big.  She used to reach for him, but she's going through a Mama stage right now.  Then I give her to him, and she pulls the pen out of his shirt pocket and tries to eat it.

In other news: (I think I might just start putting this at the bottom of each post, since I'm not keeping up with the blogging like I want to.)

I went to Time Out For Women for the first time this last weekend with Nelsa, and had a fabulous time.  One of the highlights (of many) was our lunch at the deli of a whole/natural food store.  We had turkey sandwiches with amazing pickles (really, have you ever referred to a pickle as amazing?) and we split some Spanikopita, which was so yummy.  We also talked nonstop, stayed up until close to 2:00 am, Nelsa got up in the morning to run 6(?) miles, I slept in with Becca, and we had a ton of fun.

The back yard projects are coming along.  We bought ten rose bushes - seven floribundas for behind the pergola and three hybrid teas for the side of the house.  Brian's planning on tweaking sprinklers throughout the whole yard, and it sounds like Brian's mom and I will be planting the rose bushes on Friday.  We got a little discouraged yesterday, because we haven't made any real, visual progress lately.  It's crazy how one project turns into twenty, and each of those twenty projects have their own sub-projects, and they all have to get done in order to start the next step on the big project, and how it all just comes together sometimes and makes you feel very overwhelmed.  So last night cleaned off and swept the back porch, and it made me feel so much better.  I also planted all of the front pots with Brian's mom.

Pictureless Update

I never get on the computer anymore.  I need to make more of an effort.  I know there's a lot to catch up on, but I don't know where to start. 

We've been working in our yard a lot lately.  We've got a beautiful flower bed built up behind the pergola.  All we need to do now is get the sprinklers hooked up to it and start planting!  We needed a lot of dirt to fill it, and ended up getting a TON of dirt, which means that we're also prepping every flower bed that we've every though of putting in our yard.  We've got bricks to put down today, and then a whole bunch more dirt to move.  It's been fun working together on this huge project, and now we're getting to the fun part of putting the flowers and bushes in.  It's gonna be great!

We've decided to go back to homeschooling next year.  There's a lot of little reasons for doing so, but mostly because I miss teaching the kids, and I know that we can do it successfully.  Other reasons include the fact that Alyssa doesn't get home from school until after 4:00, and I feel that a big portion of her day is wasted at school, and then when you add soccer and ballet into her schedule, it feels like we never see her.  She basically comes home, does her homework, and leaves again.  Plus, next year Ethan will be starting soccer and gymnastics, and that will add a whole new level of busy-ness to our family schedule, and I want us to be together more than just for a few minutes in the evenings before bedtime.  We're lucky that Brian has most Fridays off from work, otherwise he would never be able to see the kids.  When we decided to home school again, he volunteered to teach Science to the kids, which will be a fun opportunity for him, I think.

I'm trying to concentrate on eating better and exercising more, both for me and our whole family.  I've been having healthy fruit smoothies for breakfast, and I've cut way back on making sweets.  (Yes, Christina, even with all the times I've made no-bake cookies lately, that's still cutting back.)  We found out at a recent check up that Alyssa has higher cholesterol than most adult men.  It's not a huge surprise, given the fact that her favorite breakfast is fried eggs and her favorite foods are steak, prime rib, and cow tongue.  A few months ago I started regulating her breakfasts by cutting her back from three fried eggs to two, and forcing her to have oatmeal or cereal every other day.  Now, after finding out about her cholesterol levels, we've cut back eggs to once a week, and we've got to eat those red meats a lot less frequently as well. 

My book is coming along very slowly.  I don't get any time to work on it during the day, and once I get the kids to bed each night, I collapse into bed myself.  I'm hoping that now that Becca is getting better at sleeping at night, I'll start to have more energy to stay up later to write.  I finished two chapters a while back, let Brian ready them, got some pretty healthy criticism from him (meaning he was nice about it), vowed I would never write again, then realized I was being silly and got to work fixing things and filling in the gaps that Brian said didn't make sense.  I really need to scrap the second half of Chapter Two, and I'm excited to start over on that part and see where it takes me.  Something I've discovered about writing is that even though I have the whole story mapped out, as I go along and write each part, little things are changing, which change other things, and I think the end result is going to be a lot different than I originally imagined it to be.  It's almost like reading a book, because even though I know what's going to happen, I'm still going to be surprised at how it's going to happen.  It's interesting, because even though I'm wiring with my thoughts and ideas, the story is really writing itself, and the characters seems to be developing and becoming clear all on their own. 

Oh, it's almost nine o'clock, and we need to get working in the yard.  The sun is shining, and it looks like it's going to be a beautiful, warm day.  I'd better go get my work clothes on and get outside!