"Leaving on a Jet Plane"

We are flying out today. As usual I did not get done nearly the stuff I wanted to. I am sleep deprived and praying that the plane trip goes well. I have art supplies, games (electronic, card and travel), blankies, tags, snacks  water bottles to fill after we get through security all packed and I will still inevitably forget something. Hopefully, security will go fast and we will not be on the news because my children decided to say something that the guards took as a threat. I can already see it happening. My oldest will be joking with number 2 and they will make some inappropriate comment about being a hostage or a terrorist or whatever. They will think themselves the funniest boys on the block until their mother screams at them because now they are being escorted to the holding area. Now you know one of the reasons why I am sleep deficient and one of many nightmares that make me wake up suddenly. If we miraculously make it through security, and survive cooped up on a airplane for over 7 hours with four young boys, are able to drive over an hour and a half in the middle of the night to my brother's house, we should have an awesome time. I say should because have you ever been in close quarters with 4 little boys for an extended period of time? I am not too worried about the oldest, but number 2 gets grouchy when he is tired. Number 3 does well if he gets a fair amount of attention. If he does not get that positive attention, he is one of those lovely children that will then get the attention anyway he can. Plus, he is my wanderer. I can see it now; we will miss our flight because he has meandered off to another gate and was so fascinated by watching the plane traffic. He will not notice his parents frantically searching the airport for him. Then there is Taggy. Now as long as he has a tag, is in eyesight of Mommy (or sometimes Daddy now) he should be fine. (Once again, the dreaded should statement.) However, if he decides that he has to be held constantly and have his favorite toy in just a certain way or he will cry endlessly like we are horrible parents for not submitting to his baby authority. He will cry in such a pitiful manner that everyone else will think we are terrible parents who beat him mercilessly or just wonder what we were thinking having all these boys and then choosing to take them on a airplane when we cannot control them even a little bit. ;-P As you can tell, I am not stressing not one little bit. I could go on and on about all the scenarios that have already flashed though my mind and given enough time I will definitely come up with quite a few more scenarios and something tells me none of them will come close to the reality. Until I can update you on what actually happened please, please, I beg of you please keep us in your prayers!!

Balls!

Let me set the stage for you: My oldest son and I are at Target. We are out quickly couponing before we leave tomorrow. I am looking for the Travel Hungry Hippos game, and the candles in the Christmas section. I am not finding either but the search continues.
All of sudden, quite loudly, I hear "Wow! Look at those balls! I don't think I have ever seen balls that big before." I am now quickly scanning to see what he could be talking about. I have two women looking at me. Continuing to scan a bit more frantically, (Let me remind you, Christmas section, not Sporting goods, not toys, Christmas Section) I really could not figure out what he was talking about.
Finally what felt like 10 years later, he points and says, "See, they are huge balls!"
OH, the ornaments, the really big looking ball ornaments.
The ladies are trying not to show any emotions.
I quickly validate his statement before he says anything else, "Oh, those Christmas ornaments are big."
As I am getting the looks, I question out loud, "Was I the only one ... I was pretty sure he had no idea but..."
The younger of the two women laughing quite loudly now replied, "Your face was probably what was the funniest."
It more than likely was since I panicked. I knew that he had no idea what he was innocently implying but there was no way I could tell other people that. Instead of not worrying about what others thought, I did the exact oppisite of what the Lord tells us to do and worried about what the world thought. I would like to say lesson learned but I am a slow learner. Look at my blog post about "Do not Leave Your Laptop Unattended" if you do not believe me. Still it is a little funny to tell other adults when the children are in another room.

Surprises!

I love getting things for my children. I usually control myself pretty well since Brad and I have chosen to live a simplistic life style. (I try, I am not great but I try.) However, I have the perfect excuse now to give them the gifts I have collected, a 7 hour plane trip actually two 7 hour plane trips. I am filling their bag with new movies, leapster/v-smile games, art supplies, card games etc. I am soo excited!! Now the hard part waiting...

Chickens

Have you ever seen a chicken running around with its head cut off? I have. If you care to see a human acting the part, then come over and visit while I try and finish getting ready for our trip. Due to lack of stress in my life, I also made doctor appointments for two of my kids and and an assessment test for my husband the day before we leave. Obviously I did not think I was doing enough. Add that on to me taking care of my MIL and the endless errands I still need to run and I am sure I am a shoo-in for this part. To lighten the mood and just because it is funny you can see animated chickens dancing at this linkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8eC377h4A4&feature=related
They have tons more but be forewarned some are a bit graphic. ;P

Simple Christmas

Tonight we gave our kids their Christmas gifts. We are leaving in 3 days and will not be back until after Christmas. Now, Brad and I agreed last year to cut way back on the amount of gifts our kids get for Christmas. They each received 1 special gift specially chosen for each child. Then the rest of the presents are family presents which include 1 board game,1 electronic game, and 1 movie to share. That is it. We will still do stocking stuffers in Maryland and they will get some "plane gifts" (that is for Brad's and my sanity though!) and of course they will get gifts from family members but Brad and I will not buy anymore. This is hard for me since I love to buy my kids gifts. It is so much fun to put the thought into what they like and find the good deal and then the anticipation of their reaction is exciting too. I almost ruin birthdays and Christmas each year since I have such a hard time waiting to give them their present. This choice was not made for fiscal reasons. I tend to buy their gifts all year so we don't take the monetary hit that most families do at Christmas time. We have realized that we live in a small house, and stuff accumulates fast here. The boys are very spoiled by our family members and we do not want Christmas memories to be mostly about wanting all this new stuff. This is the second year and they seem so much more grateful and excited about the smaller amount they are given than in previous years when they each had a huge pile. Thankfully, I do not have the clutter that came from previous years too! The primary reason for this change came because we feel it is important to take the stand now about what this season is really about. I want my boys memories to be about the part they played in our church's Christmas Play, or the time spent making gifts for our friends and family or the lights show we drove through instead of making the all important list to Santa (insert eye roll here). We want them to remember that we have already been given the most precious gift of the all. Brad and I will never be able to top that gift no matter how much shopping I do :) and the best we can do is show them this gift and continue to raise them in the ways of the Lord pray constantly they will never depart. Merry Christmas!!

Ready to Lend a Hand

My MIL came home from the hospital yesterday. She had total shoulder replacement surgery and for right now her shoulder range is limited. The little boys were in the van when my husband took her home and my four-year-old was able to help take care of her. When it was time to go my child that likes to be anywhere except home wanted to stay. While a little unsure of whether this was a good idea, my husband tentatively agreed with the condition to call if we needed to come pick him up. He gave Matthew a talk which included an admonishing to be good and told him he needed to assist Nana with whatever she needed. When leaving Brad one more time asked if Matthew could help his Nana out, Matthew got the hugest grin on his face and said "Yeah, I will help Nana!" He did great too! Although Nana did say that he tried to bring her medicine about 6 times in 1 hour. He probably just wanted to make she was not in any pain. :)

Laps

I am sure many of you with boys know that they are quite different from girls. One of the ways, that I find that they are most different is their level of activity. I find that most boys cannot sit still as long as girls. The way they play shows this exuberance. Little girls sit down and play dolls or Barbies or even house. Boys, on the other hand, have weapons and have to run around playing war, or ninja and seem to have preference to hitting, shooting or stabbing each other. This is not to say that little boys cannot sit down and listen. They just tend to be more energetic in their play than most girls. This is not usually a big deal in our house. We have a pretty big yard and lots of outside toys. The problems come in when they get in trouble and the "fun" stuff starts to get taken away. When their Wii, Leapster and Didj's are taken away, they might be a little sad but it tends not faze them too much since they do not spend a tremendous amount of time on them. This might be due to Brad and I looking at these activities as treats. When their outside time gets take away, they are much more upset. Unfortunately, not only they are upset but so is the whole household since they really need to expend their very quickly pent up energy. In talking with a friend about this problem, she proposed making them run laps in our back yard. She went on to tell me at first they do not mind running them but after a little while they will look on it as more of a punishment. She has talked about this idea before and while I love it I keep forgetting to try it. Sure enough, the first couple of times they were all so excited that my littlest who was not even in trouble begged for his older brother to get him dressed and put his shoes on so he could go run too! Not only that, but they were running extra laps too. Now, when I was growing up I hated running(although I might be focusing on high school where sweating was to be avoided at all costs). After a few times of sending them outside to run their age in laps, I noticed that they were not running any extra laps (except in the morning) but they were slowing down a bit too which cause us to implement another guideline. If the laps are not "ran," then they do not count. Also, the little boys were not jumping at the chance to go "run" too. We have used it for three days now and while it is not a cure all; it has helped tremendously. After they come in, (and get a drink sometimes) they are better prepared to concentrate on the assigned task. This idea will probably be used frequently from now on as this gives them time to get some of the ants out of their pants and allows my boys the ability to focus again. I think within the next week we will be completely on track again, in chores, and school. Woohoo, anything that works effectively, right? Now why did it take me so long to implement this idea and even more so how did someone with all girls know the perfect boy fix??

2-Year-Oldism

-Yeah, poop, I wanna poop! - He wants to watch Winnie the Pooh. I wish this was about potty training. ;)

4-year-oldism

-"Look how big my tummy is!"

Me: "Wow, that is big."

-"YEAH, it is almost as big as yours!!"

Ways to Know You are One Sick Mommy

1. You do not make it out of bed until afternoon.
2. The house looks trashed (and not cause you had a busy week and were not home but because you were home CONSTANTLY!)
3. School has not been done in over a week.
4.You find your toddler eating a tortilla off a $100 CD and simply tell him to eat at the table and take away his"plate."
5. You even think of the $100 CD as a "plate" of sorts.
6 Your child is foraging and eating said tortillas and you slightly admire his resourcefulness and wonder if this because he is the fourth.
7. You would gladly trade this cough for just about any other ailment except throwing up.
8. You are praying to be hospitalized.
9. You broke down and turned on the heater because after having 3 layers on the botton 4 layers on top 3 comforters on top of you and two warm (HOT) bodies sleeping next to you, you are STILL FREEZING.
10. Not even 1 hour after you broke down and turned the heat on you have now shed all of your layers except a pair of pants and a t-shirt and wonder if you should turn the heat off even though it is 50 degrees in the house.
11. You are still in the same outfit as 2 days ago.
12. You begin to look up how many joints are in a human body because you are pretty sure you can point to all of them since they all ache like there is no tomorrow.
13. Your children have now figured out that since you are sick they can pretty much do what ever they want since you do not have the energy to properly guide them and have resorted to only trying to keep them alive until you recover.
14. You have lost your voice or try to only talk when some emergency is happening (Because otherwise it would hurt too much to be worth it).
15. The headache that started 3 days ago now seems like an annoying friend that will not go away.
16. You sleep on the couch not because you are mad at your other but so he can deal with the children that always wind up in your bed.
17. You are the new playground equipment since you have take up residence on the couch and are trying to move as little as possible.
18 You are down medications to try and see if something, anything might take the edge off and let you at least function in Zombie State.
19. You would actually prefer Zombie State to the current state you are in.
20.You are seriously considering drugging your children so they will sleep more so you can go back to sleep.

Taggy!

My little one is obsessed with tags. The last three kids have all been blanket kids, Jeremiah called it a Blanky, and Matthew called it a Dede. (Don't ask me.) Seth liked the tag on his blanket and rubbed it while he was going to sleep. In fact, he rubbed it so much that he rubbed the tag right off! Because of the lack of tag he no longer likes that blanket and has moved on to just about anything with a tag. He will rub the tag on blankets, jackets, shirts (his own and his brother's even while they are wearing them!), even car seats! His favorite for the time being is my husband's and my down comforter. Let's just say we no longer have claim to it. He will drag it out just so he can cuddle with the other or I. When my other started having to find it for him, so he could go to bed and he would giggle and laugh, the nickname started. He is now "Taggy!"

You!

Seth rarely says his name. He knows his name since he responds when we call him but when we were looking at pictures and I was trying to get him to identify himself in a picture. (Just because we haven't had a camera for quite some time doesn't mean we do not have any pictures of him just not that many since they have been take with other people's cameras and on our cell phones.)

I pointed to a picture on my phone and asked "Who is that Sethy?"

To which he promptly and enthusiastically responded, "You!"

"That's me?" (I am wondering if he was being silly.)

"No, you!"

"That's Mommy?"

"NO, YOU!!"

"OHH, that's you!"

"Yeah, YOU!" (DUH, MOMMY! is what I am sure is going through his head.)

Suffice to say we have not worked on pronouns with the little one yet.

How many cars?

My boys have been having a hard time keeping their room clean lately. In one of the many tense discussions, on how to rectify the situation, I suggested taking all the toys and moving them into our garage. I asked Seth how many cars he needed to keep happy (since those are his latest passion.)

Me- "Seth you only need what 5 cars to keep you occupied, right?"

Seth- "and a truck."

Me (trying my hardest not to laugh) "5 cars and a truck to keep you happy?"

Seth happily shouting-"YEAH!"

The discussion was temporarily shelved due to everyone busting out laughing!

Lost Child

My dad has been working on getting our fence back up. We are pet sitting soon and would like the comfort of having a fence to make sure she does not wander away. That being said I would like a fence to make sure my own children do not wander away. After an afternoon of putting up posts, my dad called it a day and put his tools away so he could head home and get ready to go to Lake Tahoe. I rounded up the children while he was doing this herded them into the house and said good-bye. After he drove off, I went to check on Matthew who I had heard playing in his bedroom but had not seen for awhile and just to reassure myself that I did indeed know where he was I walked back to the boys bedroom. I glanced in to see what he was doing, but no Matthew, I started calling for him while walking around the house. No Matthew. I walked outside and called for him still no response. By this time the other boys are calling for him too. Still no Matthew. I sent Jeremiah inside to look behind their loft bed, in closets, basically any nook or cranny in our small house. I had Erik go search the backyard and garage while I started walking toward the duplexes that are beside our house. I called my dad now starting to get upset and told him to come back because I could not find Matthew. He agreed and turned around. About a 30 seconds went by and he called back. "I have him. He crawled into his car seat and I did not even notice him." My husband chose this moment to call and was told the tale as my dad drove back to my home. As best as I can guess, Matthew had come out of the house after I had herded him and his brothers in and had gotten into my dad's car so he could go back to Mamma's and Papa's. I asked him why he did that and his response was "I didn't want to be with you anymore." From the mouths of babes...

Specifics

Today I am reminded about how important it is in our household not to be vague. We try to be very specific when we instruct or discipline our children. This is partly due to the stunts that my husband and I remember being pulled in our childhood. My brother and I were very logical and used to think about the wording of punishments to see how we could manipulate them but not disobey. For example: When I was about 12, I got into trouble for coming home late. My mom punished me and said I could not go play with my friends since I could not not keep track of time. I took that to mean I could not go to their houses so I proceeded to play with my friends in my yard. I know that she probably meant that I was not supposed to play with them at all but she was not specific and so I chose to use that to my advantage, my poor mother (just as a side note, I have apologized countless times for my behavior growing up.) Well, it is now coming full circle. I just told one of my children to go sit on his bed until I called for him and if I saw him playing with one toy (Their bedroom and playroom are one in the same now.) his hand would get spanked along with his bottom. (Trust me, it has been a long day/week/month.) My husband quickly called out, "And she did not ONLY mean you cannot play with one toy. You cannot play with any toy or toys." I smiled to myself as I realized the now obvious ambiguousness of my statement. I knew if I was said child I would have reasoned my antics away by stating, "I did not disobey. I did not play with one toy but with toys." The joys of raising reasoning, logical children. Thankfully my husband was there to immediately clarify.

Cheap Entertainment!

Okay from my limited experience, toddlers take pleasure in the simplest of things. Each of my children for the first 2 sometimes 3 Christmases found more pleasure playing with a box than the actual toys. In this vein, another very simple/inexpensive, can even be made at home for cheaper, source of amusement for toddlers, and most preschoolers too, is BUBBLES! My 2-year-old found a small bottle of bubbles in a box of stuff brought in to be put away from cleaning out the garage. He immediately tore off the wrapper and brought it to me to open up. We proceeded to play with it for the next 5 minutes until i put the lid back on so I could go back to folding laundry. He promptly took the lid off and in his zest to stomp a bubble ended up spilling the bottle. Thankfully it cost me about 5 cents so other than needing to quickly clean up the spill off the Pergo no big deal. By the way I am still very thankful for our lack of carpeting in the house. It is so much easier to maintain. The bubble mixture wiped right up and Seth very quickly found another bottle of bubbles. This time I will be putting it up so we can keep it for more than 5 minutes.

Note: Before I could get to him he spilled that bottle too!

Exercising

I was given an elliptical by some neighbors of my MIL who were moving. They did not use it and were wondering if I wanted it. Definitely!! I have been wanting one for quite some time over 3 years to be more precise. Now to make sure I use it and it did not wind up sitting in my house like it did in theirs. In order to do that, I challenged my oldest to getting our exercise in everyday. We put our letter on the calendar after we exercise to keep track. It is working. I am probably being premature but it is Day 4 and I have upped my time and have not skipped one day. I cannot let my nine-year-old show me up!

The Tale of a Reformed Messy Garage

I need to clean out my garage.

Really Bad!!

I cannot walk through it anymore.

The garage cleaning fairy has not visited.

I have been putting it off all summer because it was too hot.

It is now fall and the garage still needs attention.

It has to winterized (our garage floods in any big rainstorm) or I will lose lots of important items. Things that I did not know were pertinent until I have to get rid of them due to water damage, mold, mildew etc.

The garage fairy keeps rescheduling.

Now we have had two rainstorms.

The garage still needs to be cleaned.

Sigh.

I don't want to clean the garage and I do not feel good but...Hooray! We cleaned the front part of it today. By we I mean I conned my closet friend with pizza into helping. (I think she would have done it without the bribe of pizza since she is so nice but it did help that we did not have our minions constantly reminding us that they were going to die of immanent starvation.) We had 8 children running wild while she helped me sort through the stuff that has been accumulating since I moved. This includes the stuff I was going to try selling though a garage sale (That turned out to be the saddest garage sale ever.) and all the boxes that were destroying the ambiance of my front room right after I moved. (I had to get them out of my house before I went crazy!) We got it down to about 3 boxes and ignored the back half that we could not access due to my dad's tools being on top of my stuff. (In his defense, there was no place to put them since my garage has not had a walking path since the first week my boys put their bikes away. In my defense, the tools were only supposed to be stored that way for a couple of days so I could clean out that part of the garage.)

I am happy to say that the front part of the garage is now clean, winterized and there is a very clear walking path.

WOO-HOO!!!

Now I need to clean my house.

Do you know how fast 8 kids can destroy a house when there is not any adult supervision?

UPDATE:

11/13/2010

I cleaned out the back half of the garage made a walkway, a place for the boys bikes, organized their toys, found a spot for my husbands papers, put everything that could be susceptible to water damage up on pallets or shelves and even designated a nice place for my dad to store his tools while he finishes my fence.

It looks WOW!

I wonder how long until it will need to cleaned again. Probably as most things in this house, way too soon.

BTW do you know how fast 4 boys with very little adult supervision can tear apart a house?

Halloween

When did Halloween turn into a weekend event? asked my husband after we attended the third event this weekend. My MIL kindly responded, "When you met Beth." It is true. I like to socialize maybe too much. I commit to too many things because I want my boys to have fun and then end up making my life stressful because we are racing to do everything. That being said we did not go to the seven events that I had planned and only went to three. I would share pictures of how adorable my children looked in their matching costumes but one of the costumes was not shipped so we had to scramble at the last minute and instead of having 3 Star Wars Shadow Clone Troopers we were going to have a battle with between 2 Star Wars Shadow Clone Troopers and a Star Wars Clone Trooper. Then said child randomly found a Optimus Prime Helmet in the garage so he decided he was going to wear that instead. We also had the the cutest lamb you ever saw. He was a baaaa baaaaby. The awesome picture never was taken since we still do not have a working camera and are waiting until the after Thanksgiving sale to buy one. The boys had a great time and only one boy was lost for 20 minutes and found happily going down the slide at a bounce house having no knowledge he was lost. Those of you who know the boys will know without being said who this child was since he is the wanderer in the family. I hope all had a very Happy Halloween!

Where are all of the Pictures?

If you have noticed the lack of pictures, there is a reason for it. Not necessarily a good reason but a reason nonetheless. In our last move, (which hopefully will not happen again for a long time) both of our cameras were misplaced. I recently found one of the cameras lurking in the laundry basket which has the clean pajamas in it. On a side note, the only reason why I found it is because our washing machine went out and I could not fold the current weeks laundry so I finally got to the basket which has all the PJs that need to be matched. While I was matching the huge overflowing basket, I turned up the camera and quite a few other things too. I downloaded all the pictures off the memory card and reformatted it. Then decided to take a few practice pictures and all of a sudden ... the camera stopped working so until we buy a new one my blog will be pictureless.

When Simple Plans Turn Complicated

How do our simple plans turn into a campaign for large complicated strategies of enjoyment? This weekend was supposed to be easy. I had learned my mistake from years in the past. We would do 1 maybe 2 things and keep things uncomplicated. I was purposely not going to commit to going to 4 different places this year. I expressed thanks for invitations but explained that we were keeping our weekend light for the sake of our younger children. (I wasn't going to tell everybody that it was I who did not want to deal with the complaining, whiny, over-stimulated littles.) Then somehow like always it all went downhill. It started out as attending a church's Family Fun Fest where my kids go to classes. Then we signed up for the school's Harvest Festival. After all, we could not miss that. We go every year and the kids love it. On another day my oldest expressed interest in attending another church's Harvest Festival on the preceding night. That did not seem too bad and we did not having anything else planned that day. (Ha!! I forgot about the baking I committed to and a pick-up of food for my MIL and our normal extra chores since it was a weekend) Then while driving home one day we finally saw our Community Centers Sign for their event which we have been wondering when it was going to happen. We have attended a few times in the past and enjoy it. Then my best friend invited us to her church's Harvest Festival and now somehow before I knew it I committed to not 1 or 2 events for the weekend but 7. Yes, 7 events and they somehow all snuck up on me so I still thought until today we were only doing 2 or 3 things not 7! Unfortunately, this does not include our regular weekend activities either. Once again, I will be dealing with a complaining, whiny, over-stimulated brood. I am beginning to realize the way to avoid this is not just saying no to the random invitations that we receive but using the calendar we have. This way when I glance at it right before saying yes to one more thing it will be a visual reminder of the plans we have already made. Someday soon I will be the perfect organized wife/mom. Okay, everybody can stop laughing now! :)

Growing Up

The older people in our house are sick again. This is the second time this year and it is only October. Erik came home throwing up after his last class yesterday. Brad has been gracing the toilet since the night before and a little while after I was home my stomach wanted to share with the toilet as well. Thankfully, I had my way and my stomach stayed selfish. (I like coffee, a lot, and I am not sure I could palate it after an episode such as that.) All this gross talk to say you know you are growing up when you still do your chores (at least some of them) when you are sick. Erik gets up from laying on his bed and goes into the kitchen and see the garbage and informs me "I think I better take the garbage and recycles out they are over full." I responded "I have already ask Jeremiah to so you do not need to worry about it." "Thats okay, I can take care of it." Wow, I thought I had a few more years before I could expect anything more than the moaning, whining, and pathetic looks when he was sick. I cannot believe how responsible he is sometimes either that or just does not want anyone taking his precious job away from him. :)

Freezer Meals= Gourmet?

Usually, I do not mind cooking except in the summer when I do just about anything to avoid adding more heat to my house. (This year, I tried to convince my children eating was unnecessary since it is too hot but for some reason they disagreed. :) Now that it is getting cold again I find myself in the kitchen more if only to keep from freezing but I am not a chef or even a good cook. I am not very creative aka I do not cook gourmet by any stretch of the imagination. I just try to get healthy, inexpensive, moderately tasty meals on the table in a timely fashion(aka before my children die of starvation at 5:00). Thankfully my husband and children are troopers who do not complain and are not picky. This lack of creativity is more because I do not feel like I have enough time at the "right" time. I have found out what works for our family is on the days I do not work I make "extra" meals. I usually buy in bulk and cook any where from 3 to 10 meals at a time and freeze them. For example, I will cook up 5lbs of hamburger meat and divide the meat to make spaghetti, some kind of homemade hamburger helper/casserole/ hot dish, sloppy joes, and tacos. I usually put a bunch of vegetables into the meals to make them healthier and to stretch the meat a little. If I do it correctly, each one of these different meals can then be split into 2 more meals. All this, so I do not walk into the kitchen at 5:00 having no idea what to make for dinner. For some reason the dinner hour seems to be extremely stressful since the boys are STARVING, tired, grumpy, etc. at this time and 1 or more of them always seems to NEED me NOW! I find if I have dinner, either defrosting in the fridge or microwave, I can then attend to the random but dire needs of whomever and still get a healthy, moderately tasty, meal on the table in relative ease. This weekend as I was making my freezer dinners I happened to be on the phone with my dad who suggested we share meals. Wait, am I understanding him right? All I had to do was let my dad take my home my extra boring soup to feed to his guys and in return in the next day or two he would give me what he made for his household. Of course we can share meals!! Now you should know something here, my dad should be a gourmet chef so whatever possessed him into thinking up something so grossly unfair to himself is beyond me but by no means am I going to let this enchanting deal pass me by. When I am at his house, I always end up eating more than I should, since there is always something too yummy to pass up! Today this translated into my dull chicken and dumpling soup turning into a yummy pork roast with garlic mashed potatoes! There is no doubt in my mind that I, by far, got the better end of this deal! Thanks Dad!! My only thought now is what is my next dreary meal going to turn into?

6-Year-Old Wisdom

Overheard while the kids were eating cereal for breakfast.

Jeremiah, "Mommy we need to get a cow because of how much milk we go through."

Matthew, "Why?"

Jeremiah, "Do you know what a cow pees out?"

Matthew, "What?"

Jeremiah, "Milk!"

I am now trying to decide if I need to make up a lesson covering this or if we should take a field trip to a farm.

UPDATE!!

Jeremiah does know where the milk on a cow comes from. He was just trying to pull one over on his brother. I think he got me too! :)

4-year-oldism

Matthew last night at dinner, "Mom, this is the BEST dinner I never had!!"

CT Visits!

I think I speak for every Homeschooling mom when I say ARRGH!!! Not only do you feel the need to clean your house from top to bottom but your children need to be fully caught up with school! This does not sound too hard but CT (Certified Teacher) visits always seems to come after the family has been sick or right before or after a family vacation or some other huge event. They never come when you are fully caught up on housework and school work. I type this as I frantically try to finish up my daily lesson plans and fill any gaps in my monthly lesson plan(I lesson plan during summer so I have to make any adjustments that happen along the way). At the same time, I cannot imagine Homeschooling my children on my own anymore. I LOVE our teacher and our school. She is so great about everything. I love how family friendly our school is too! They highly encourage us to bring all of our kids to their events not just the school age children and the some teachers will bring their families too! All that to say even though I might be complaining right now I defiantly prefer having my kids enrolled in a charter school as opposed to doing it on my own! Now it is back to panicking!!

Food

Matthew walks into the room, "Why did nobody make me food?" His hands are on hips and his foot is tapping.

I briefly considered punishing him for his attitude then sent him to go ask his dad so I could burst out laughing.

The Sickies :(

Thankfully the sickies do not hit our house often and even more thankfully I am not the one usually sick. I do have allergies but that does not count as being sick just makes me tired and worn out. This time though I was the one sick so much so that I made Brad turn around from driving to baseball and take me home. Trust me I tried to grin and bear it. Through this I have learned even more how much my children are growing up. Erik has been such a help through it all well, until he started feeling sick. I think there should be some kind rule that if parents get sick then the older kids are not allowed to be sick too. It just leaves no one to keep the house from falling apart. Jeremiah helped out quite a bit as well but remember he is 6. He has grown up so much in so many ways during the last year. It still catches me by surprise. Thankfully we are on the mend.

Drinks

In our house, we do not do a lot of juice or what I refer to as sugar water (IE Kool-Aid or Tang etc.). I usually try to have water and diluted down caffeine free tea in the refrigerator especially in the summer. I do this for a variety of reasons. It is healthier in so many ways. My kids rehydrate themselves without consuming sugar, or caffeine. As far as the argument that a 6 oz serving of juice equals a fruit, I prefer my children to eat their fruit, again, because it is far healthier and it is a nice dessert. Health concerns aside, I found another reason to avoid sugar drinks as I was cleaning today, STICKY FLOORS!! It seems the sugar in the drinks dries like a glue trap so every speck of dirt in our place is attracted to it and as many of you know, we have truck fulls of dirt here. Now, I have dark spots all over a freshly mopped floor (ok, not so fresh now, since I try hard to only mop nightly with spot mopping done during the day). I am pretty sure we will not be serving any more sugar drinks except on special occasions this summer since I am do not think I can keep up with the mess!

Happy Birthday Seth!

A little late but thats what happens when your internet does not work. My baby is two! He is losing the baby look but he will always be my baby! Happy Birthday and I love you, Seth!

Resting

Our house is in a bit of turmoil right now so we will take a break until Feb. We need to move and things are a little too hectic right now. But soon and very soon I will be back to tell/brag about the boys!