Sunday, January 25, 2009

I am going on an adventure!

Yes, that is right! Tomorrow my sweetheart and I will be heading off for a week of bliss and relaxation. Please pray for my wonderful in-laws to have enough strength to take care of 4 very active little girls.

Some things I am most excited about for this VACATION!

-I will be able to hear my own thoughts.

-I will be able to sleep in

-I will be able to completely relax by myself and with my sweetheart

-By the time our vacation is over with I believe I will be able to form well thought out sentences again

-My twin sister and her husband are driving up and spending the week with us as well.

-I will be at ease because our children will be taken care of by 2 of the most amazing people ever.

-I am going to not feel bad about spending money on myself.

-I am going to get an insanely divine massage at a relaxing spa

-When we get back I will feel like I will be able to be a great Mommy again

There are a few things I am looking forward to.

We are taking this trip because we will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year, and we have not gotten away for almost 2 years and that has taken its toll on me.

You see I believe that every couple should get away at least once every year, weather you have children or not. It just is a good idea. So it may be a year late but it is better late than never. Anyway I feel like I have been babbling. I just wanted to share with the world that I AM SOOOOO HAPPY TO BE GETTING AWAY!

Monday, January 12, 2009

The Full Moon Effect

Crazy, but adorable Lucy
I am just curious if my family is the only one that is effected by a full moon. I am not sure the science behind how it happens, but I have the evidence that it does happen. I am usually first alerted of a forthcoming full moon generally 3-4 days before the actual day. Lucy will have a series of falls. Not normal childhood falls but wacky ones.

For instance, I was at a friends home visiting and Lucy was sitting at her kitchen table when she went to grab something and Lucy's chair freakishly slipped from under her and she fell perfectly flat on her face causing her to have a bloody nose.

Or the time when we were playing upstairs and I was trying to tag her and she was aiming for her toddler bed for safety and her foot gave out just at the exact location for her to fall forward and hit the bed frame between her eyes. She looked like one of those characters from Star Trek.

The other day, she and I were in the bathroom going potty before nap time and she was standing on the stool waiting for me and the stool flipped out from under her feet. Her poor little back skidded down across the cupboard handles and she landed perfectly into the stool, like a kitten stuck in a barrel with only its legs and hands sticking out. I could go on with past full moon Lucy accident, but I will move on.

The girls all seem to talk a whole lot more when it is the day before and the day of the full moon. If you can just imagine how much they can talk on normal days, multiply that by a factor of 2. It may not sound that bad, but trust me, it will make the sanest person put up the white flag of surrender.

I have come to the realization that this happens once a month, and it is most likely preparing me for when they are all teenagers. YAHOO! At least I know that normalcy (and I use that term loosely) will resume in 1 to 2 days.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

One big sigh....................

I am too tired to edit this post so if there is poor grammar, I guess you get what you pay for :)

Today felt like it took FOREVER. I stayed home with the crazy ladies because Emma came down with a cold. Jared had all sorts of meetings before and after church and it was just easier to have them all stay home.

Anyway the day started out great. The girls and I had our own primary and we had a lesson from the January friend magazine. We talked about being daughters of God and how that makes them royalty. We then made crowns. In the process of getting all of the materials to make the crown and everything organized to do it, Kady managed to pull my Great-Grandmas glass pie plate from back within our cupboard and as soon as it hit the floor it shattered everywhere. So I bid adieu to my treasured pie plate.

My dear friend just recently posted about a apron she had received from her grandmother and how it makes her feel a certain way. Well I feel the same way about the cooking ware I received from my Great grandma as she does about her apron.

When I am cooking with what used to be her cookware(which I do several times a week) I feel like I am carrying on a legacy and keeping to traditions that seem to be drifting away in our society. I love the fact that I can shred cheese with a hand shredder which I was told she made the best coleslaw from. I love the fact that the big soup pot I make our soups in, helped make delicious soups 40 years ago.

My pie plate has made many of the most delicious pies ever. It is mostly because of these treasured pieces I get to cook with and bake with that make my food so scrumptious. So to lose one makes me a little sentimental.

Luckily we all walked away from the accident with no cuts, which I am very grateful for. So getting back to the rest of the day and how it went. The ladies did fine being cooped up in the home for the majority of the day. By the time 3p.m. came around I think my face started twitching. Jared had gotten home and it seemed like they all went on some whining fest.

Kady would pretty much scream if Jared was not holding.

I could not tell what Lucy was saying because is was all slurred into a whining voice and so she became extra frustrated, as well as I.

Sera turned into a bullie. You know the kind where when they are talking to you they puff their chests up.

Emma's nose decided to work overtime on draining itself and so anytime she was near me she was breathing out of her mouth warm "cold" germs which gave me the jeebies and which prompted me to become whiny.

I have a thing about breath from a mouth being breathed on me. It just is not my thing. I am going to divert my message for a moment because it is important to note that at night when Jared and I are sleeping and he turns to face me it wakes me up because he is a mouth sleeper and the 20 second intervals of warm blasts of breath wake me. This is how it is...
breath(snore) in and pause and POOF exhale of warm, move my eyebrows, blast of breath.

Jared asked me if they had been like this all day. I assured him that they were fine all morning and that we enjoyed spending our morning quietly playing, reading or making our crowns.

I decided they were all going to bed early. So we had dinner at 4:15, had baths at 5:00, story time at 5:30, and bedtime 6pm. They were all out by 6:15.

Now I am enjoying this quiet time before I clean up dinner and I am breathing a sigh of relief (not on anyone though) that the day is over with the crazy ladies, that's including myself.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Why can't I be nice?

I have a serious problem. It has to do with when the children get sick. Instead of being the kind Mom that says, "Oh, I am soooo sorry you are not feeling well, here come here so I can make you feel better." No, I am more like, "psh, will you please stop coughing and sneezing on me?" and "Stay away from your sisters," and "I told you to keep your hands out of your mouth and eyes and nose when we are in public places and at school." I am a meanie, plain and simple, a meanie!

I was helping out in Sera's class a while back ago. I was all cheerful and just thinking how rewarding it would be to be a teacher when one of the kids I was working with sneezed without covering his mouth and nose and snot shot out of his orifices. I suddenly became a meanie. The kid just sat there for a moment with snot dripping off of him, then he attempted to clean it up with his hands and smears it everywhere and I am trying not to throw up from gagging while I say in a very stern voice, "Stop it, we don't clean up snot with our bare hands, put your hands in the air and go to the sink and wash them for 30 seconds with soap." He just stood there for a moment staring at me like I had just spoken a different language. He finally did go and do what I had asked him to do while I then got several antibacterial wipes and disinfected the whole surrounding area and the sink he had used. This experience quickly made me realize I would be a terrible teacher. I realized I am a very conditional person. As harsh as that sounds, it is true.

At church a couple of Sundays ago, a young man went to go grab Kady's hand and I said abruptly, "Don't touch her hands." He paused and then said, "May I ask why you don't want me to touch her hands?" I said, "Most certainly." I then proceeded to tell him that she likes to put her hands in her mouth and that he has been shaking a whole lot of other people's hands who might not have washed their hands recently and she could get sick and I hate having sick kids...yada yada yada! The poor kid got a lecture I don't think he was expecting. But really in my opinion it is rude to touch babies hands.

I really think it should be mandatory for everyone to take a Microbiology class sometime early in their youth. I learned all sorts of things that have contributed to my "personally diagnosed" OCD of germs. Yes, I recognize that germs are everywhere and it is inevitable that we get sick, but I also believe that we should teach our children proper hygiene and the difference between good and bad germs.

So going back to me being a meanie when my kids are sick. I hate it! I am just recently realizing that they don't get sick on purpose. I know I am a little slow. Good news is that I am a lot more compassionate than I used to be.

Actually, a great way to get your kids feeling better is to talk about enemas. I had a great friend in Scottsbluff who told me that when she was growing up and she or her siblings were sick, her parents would give them enemas. She said that if they ever said "Can I stay home from school, I don't feel very well?" her mom would say "Sure, I will get the enema ready and you will be healthy in no time" She said they would magically feel better.

So I tried this method this week. Sera had not been feeling well. After the second day, I told her that if she was not feeling better the next day then she would be getting an enema. Emma's eyes lit up, as she had experienced one recently. She quickly said "Oh Sera, you definitely do not want one of those" Where Sera said "I feel better already Mom, will I have to have a enemy?" I said " I don't know it all depends on how you feel tomorrow." Sera said "But I am not sick anymore and I don't want an enemy."

I am convinced that, for the remainder of the night, Sera talked whatever illness she had out of her because in the morning, she was sounding great and was back to herself again. No enemies for Sera. I guess the trick for older kids is to scare the sickness out of them. And talk of enemas will do that. Meanie? Yup!

Let the construction begin

Our poor bathrooms in our home are pretty drab. And, for the most part falling apart, so we have decided to do something about it. Jared started doing the demolition on the downstairs bathroom this evening while I went out to Lowes to do some pricing on items.

The problem is this: We haven't had to do home improvement things in a really long time, so we are a little rusty. So I guess it is just a matter of telling ourselves that we can do this.

I was just informed of and shown the original wallpaper that probably dates back to the 40's. I will have pictures later.

Our motto in the past when we have done projects has been: "It always takes longer then what you think and more money then you had planned on." So then, should our goal be to get these projects done before the end of the year? I think that they should be done before the baby comes. If I turn into an irrational demanding person, to get the jobs done before the baby comes, I guess I can just blame it on pregnancy hormones. Is that fair? I deserve some functional bathrooms right?

I will keep you posted on our progress.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Baby to be...

UltraSound #1

UltraSound #3


UltraSound #4
...which seems to be errily similiar to Rondin's The Thinker...
The Thinker

UltraSound #2

So there it is another girl. My twin and I will both have 5 girls each. What are the odds of that happening?!?

My husbands thought on having another daughter is "Why mess with perfection!" He is so great! He will surely be one who endures all things with so many daughters. But what better man to take on the challenge.