Did someone say "snow"?

Here are some of the shots I took of the kids sledding with Uncle Jeff. They had a great time!!!

Uncle Jeff giving Gage a ride up the hill!

Ashlynn & Ryde taking off!

Gage towing his sled:

Grandpa towing Ryde up the hill with the Ranger....tough life!

My boot in the snow, so glad I reclaimed these from mom's closet :-)!

Ashlynn heading back to make another run:

Ashlynn & Ryde cruising:

Uncle Jeff protecting Ashlynn from crashing into thorn bush and fence!

The hill we had to ride up...so happy for 4 wheel drive!!

Ryder & the tree.

Gage riding with Uncle Jeff.

A little bit of Christmas.

We received over a foot of snow from Christmas Eve through Christmas day....can someone say WHITE Christmas!! Her are a few shots of the kids opening their gifts!

Ashlynn with her Polly Pocket roller coaster, I will admit I did not want to get this, but daddy pointed out Ashlynn's a great kid and it's all she wanted.....

Aunite Coleenie gave Addie the cutest fleece pants and hoodie-she loved them!

Here are they are ready to go!

Gage starting to open...

Ryder's (and all the other kids') favorite gift, an entire pack of gum, just for him!

Addie's new (and much needed) jacket.

My favorite shot...apparently she was not ready for the snow....

Christmas around here.

A couple of favorite things during Christmas, for me, are getting cards (especially with pictures!) and our Christmas tree.

This year we taped the cards to the door from our kitchen to laundry room so we could look at them all the time!

I love our bright tree....though without Auntie Paula's skills, it would never look so nice!!

What are some of your favorite things?

Ashlynn's New Do.

Ashlynn had her hair cut today and she couldn't wait to show you all! They even flat ironed it for her and she has decided that's what she wants for Christmas...I guess when you've never had your hair straight before it's a real treat :-)!!

Here it is:

Milan's stocking is complete!

Check it out here.

The many faces of Gage.

He's loving the camera right now....and I'm loving him!

Some good tunes.

Aside from the classic Perry Como, Nat King Cole and Dean Martin, this has become my favorite Christmas CD this year! There are some amazing tracks including a blues/jazz version of What Child is This?, a song they wrote that I might listen to all year long (Hallelujah-Light has Come), and many other classic Christmas songs they arranged beautifully! If you especially like singing along, this is a must, you can join in with the harmonies :-).Check it out!

Mimi and Papa's....without Mimi and Papa :-(

Since Grams and Gramps have been in San Diego we haven't ventured south for a visit. Well, Aunt Betty gave me a call and reminded me that we did have cousins and Aunts and Uncles we could visit so the kids and I hopped in the car and headed south. The mention of Christmas candy being made and a little warmer weather helped too :-)!! Here are a few pictures for you, Mimi and Papa, in honor of "coffee with Mimi"....they had it every. single. day.

Addie begged for a cup herself...maybe next time....

Thanksgiving '09

First, we need to start with what is important...FOOD!

Here are the rolls courtesy of Our Best Bites:

Here are the pies, we had apple, pumpkin and cherry, mmmmmmm!

Dale modeling and using the apron I made for him:

Jake and Addie:

Ashlynn beating all of us at the game table:

Gage feeling privileged to sit at the head of the table (how that happened only Grandpa knows...):

Ryde making his usual face for the camera:

We had a great day and ate until we couldn't move...hey, it's tradition. And we've just sort of been eating ever since. Snickerdoodles. Pecan Balls. Peanut Butter Blossoms (my personal fave). Christmas colored M&M's. Welcome holiday season!

She does do more than sleep in her high chair.

Carrots anyone?

Leaves. Lots of them.

Things that come to mind when I look at this picture:

• Safety first.
• "Ok, everybody put a hand in, we jump in the pile on three,...."
• "If we pretend like we are talking, he'll keep working and won't notice."
• "Mom says she loves raking leaves, I'd rather be jumping in...."
  

He did get to play in them....

And so did this cutie:

Nigh, nigh.

We spent the afternoon at Grandma L & Grandpa D's house. Can you tell she played outside? Right after her last bite of chocolate chip cookie she faded away to dreamland.....




Now, officially, all of our kids have fallen asleep in the high chair. Good food, good times.

I want to be Tallon.

Today is my nephew Tallon's 9th birthday! He reminds me so much of Ryder, they have the exact same playful smile with that sparkle in their eye. Last night I was talking to Nicole and she began to tell me the list of food this kid was getting for his birthday. So, here in no particular order is why I want to be Tallon today:

• Pancakes for breakfast.
• In-N-Out Burger delivered to him at school for lunch.
• Chocolate Chip Cookies and Brownies for dessert at school.
• Tacos for dinner.
• Cheesecake for dessert.

Need I say more? Don't you want to be Tallon?

It must be Christmas!

Yesterday we woke up to a little white on the ground. I grumbled under my breath about having snow so early and let out a sigh. As I walked in the kitchen there was Gage, standing on the chair peering out the window, shouting with excitement, "It's Christmas, mommy, it's Christmas! I wuv the snow, I wuv the snow!" How could I burst his bubble of joy? With a smile on my face we looked out the window together and I let his excitement pour into me (for a little while anyway:-)!). Later in the day the dusting of white had melted (to my relief) and when Gage woke from his nap, he cried when he looked out the window and shouted, "It's gone mommy, the snow is gone! I want it to come back, I don't want no snow, I want it back!"

That's the nice thing about kids, just when you are ready to be miserable, they come along and see the greatest joy in the situation. Let's hope I can continue to allow their excitement for life to spill over into mine!

Darf Bader and Obie Nobie

It's official. My kids are Star Wars fans. Thanks to Auntie Paula.

She somehow stumbled on Return of the Jedi and had the kids completely engrossed in it. Next thing I knew they had rented that and Episode IV (I only know the episode number because I looked at the DVD). Ofcourse, there were some scenes they skipped, but all I have heard from Gage is, "Darf Bader, mommy, it's Darf Bader and Obie Nobie!".

Personally, I'm just not a huge fan of fantasy/sci-fi type movies (unlike the rest of my siblings). No offense to the gajillion of you that are, but, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Spiderwick Chronicles and the like have never made it to my top 100 must see films. So, thanks a lot Auntie Paula, hopefully they will be returned soon and I won't have that muffled breathing, "Luke, I am your Father" in my head anymore!

Higher level thinking.

Friday, I was reading "The Great Turkey Race" to the kids. It's a cute little story about three turkeys who are competing to be the "special" Thanksgiving turkey for Farmer Joe and Farmer Kate until one of them realizes they will actually be "dinner". With that information, they throw the competition out the window and quickly find a way to escape. The second to last page shows them jumping the fence and running away and the last picture is of Farmer Joe and Farmer Kate having vegetable stew for Thanksgiving instead.

Then, the questions began.....

Ashlynn: "Mom, what are they doing? I don't get it."

Me: "The turkeys are running away so they won't get eaten for dinner. See how the farmers are just eating veggies for Thanksgiving now?"

Ashlynn: "Yes, but mom, if they run away, they are just going to get eaten by wild animals in the woods....so what's the difference?"

How can you argue with the concept of the food chain? Seriously, I was like, "Why didn't I ever think of that?"

The view from my window.

Oh, how I wish I had my camera! The weather is just gorgeous here and since October was so dreary and drizzly, we are basking in the sunshine and warmth outside every scheduled minute we can :-). It's been so cute watching the kids play and I keep seeing moments I would normally capture with my precious camera, so since it is apparently gone for good and the budget doesn't warrant a replacement just yet, I'll give the you the best description I can.

Ashlynn has on a pair of red, comfy cotton cropped pants with tiny cream hearts all over them. She is wearing her tan Ugg boots with a multicolored pink long-sleeved shirt and a bright pink Green Bay Packers beanie. Seriously a photo-op for all times! She has the football in her hands and is running with wild abandon, giggling all over the back yard. I can see my carefree girl traveling the world and living at the beach one day!

Gage has on a blue pair of track pants with a t-shirt that has some sort of truck on it. I'm pretty sure there are no shirts without some sort of truck/motorcycle/dinosaur/etc available for three year old boys. He has a Cars beanie on his head and is chasing after Ashlynn, gets a hold of her for a moment and crashes down through the leaves like a linebacker who's missed his man. He doesn't even wince and gets right back up to chase again. He just might be a lineman one day, and the running back had better hope to have Ashlynn's luck!

Addie, with her tan coat striped cotton pants and sparkly pink shoes is plopped down in the horseshoe pit and methodically scooping tiny shovels of sand into the dump truck. She is very diligent in her work and has not missed the dump end once. The surrounding chaos doesn't even phase her........definitely a fourth child and an air traffic controller in the making.

Ryder, in his usual pair of shorts, t-shirt and flip flops, is climbing the swing set. He has the swings and ropes twisted into wild knots and keeps calling, "look at me mom!", while maneuvering jumping from one pole to the next. I will not be shocked if this kid climbs rocks for a living one day, though he might pursue that for a hobby and settle on engineering so he can challenge even the best builders.

Hopefully this will help me to remember what I saw today when I looked out the window, every minute that passes takes a little piece from my memory and there is no way to slow that down!

Scheduling, a dangerous job.

My dear, sweet sister sent me the coolest book on scheduling and organizing my household. She actually bought the book for herself and didn't see the subtitle (that was quite large:-)!) "A Practical Guide to Daily Scheduling for Christian Homeschool Families" and since she is not homeschooling yet, thought it might be good for me.

I read through the entire book in one evening.

It's like 175 pages of organization on steroids. I loved it.

I am not an organized person. Routine, yes. Scheduled, uhhhh...

The next evening I set out scheduling everyone's chart and what our goals for each day would be. It was akin to a really challenging math problem, trying to get all of the time slots for five people to mesh and become cohesive. But, alas, I came out the victor and our schedule was born.

Ofcourse, this all happened by Thursday night and I prepped the kids for it on Friday and let them know we would start Monday. Some of my kids fall into the type A category and begged to start at that very moment, so me being flexible said "sure, why not?".

I don't think that was part of the plan. Oops. Oh well.

Ashlynn started rinsing dishes (her new job) and Gage began to load the kids plates (his new job) and the next thing I knew.....water was all over the floor and Gage didn't realize the rack needed to be pushed in before the door was closed resulting in a broken plate.

Who's idea was this?

The rest of Friday actually went really well and all of the kids had quiet time (so did I!) and we all played together (scheduled now) read together (scheduled now) and made dinner together (also on the schedule). We spent Saturday really cleaning and Sunday was very relaxed. We are now in our official first day and it has been AMAZING!

Seriously, I am so not into schedules; I like to wake up and see where the day takes me. But we have not wasted a moment today, no TV, my house is clean, laundry is done (scheduled to be put away at 3:30), school is done, the kitchen is clean and I know what I making for dinner!

The best part of all, the kids love it. So thank you Nicole, now I'm sorry, but I can only call at scheduled times only.......:-)

What are the odds?

Nicole and I were talking on the phone last night and she got into this story about burning toast and throwing it outside so the house wouldn't smell like burned toast and we were laughing about keeping it away from their dog and how burned toast makes your house stink forever.

She was making the toast because she was short on breadcrumbs.

Hmmm, funny I was short on breadcrumbs last night and made toast too.

She said it was mostly going to be flaxseed meal.

Hmmm, mine was going to be the same.

"Nicole, would you be making breadcrumbs for chicken tenders? The same chicken tenders we just finished eating for dinner?"

Two sisters, two thousand miles apart, both making chicken tenders for dinner, both burning toast trying to make breadcrumbs that we were out of. Seriously, either our menu needs to be expanded or we have some kind of crazy sister mind reading stuff going on!!

It fits, well....sorta.

Ashlynn has been feeling lousy the last few days and just needed a nice soothing bath before bed tonight. After she was finished and I had washed her hair that is so long now, when it is wet it settles in the bath water when she is sitting in the tub, we ran into a little problem.

I had already put Addie to bed.

Addie and Ashlynn share a room.

I had not taken any jammies out of the room for Ashlynn.

With all of our kids, except one, we have been able to traipse into their room and just short of vacuuming, nothing would wake them up once they were down for the night. Can you guess who the exception is?

Addie.

The girl jumps up like she's be lying there waiting for the moment you creak the door handle. And if you actually make it a couple of steps in the room she really lets you have it.

No problemo, let's just get you something of mine. A t-shirt and pair of shorts will do, just need to roll up the waistband a couple of times and we're good to go.

Wait a second. Did I just put my clothes on my daughter and they're not falling off of her? She proudly pointed them out to Ran before sneaking into bed and he just looked at me in shock....and told Ashlynn she must quit growing this moment.

So many people told me/tell me/will tell me how fast time goes by with your kids, but every single day the speed amazes me. There are moments I want it so desperately to slow down, but then I sometimes think about shoes (& my love of them) and the fact that I have two daughters and maybe there's a chance we could all have the same shoe size one day.....soon.

They know who Mr. Darcy is.

Addie was up most of the night with an earache and I woke up this morning with a sore throat. After I made breakfast I plopped myself on the couch and closed my eyes for a second..or two...or three. The next thing I knew, Ashlynn assumed the role of mommy. She was dishing up snacks, lunch and refilling sippie cups. She made sure the boys played in the basement and kept Addie entertained. After lunch I put Addie down for a nap and put Pride and Prejudice on, nothing like a little Jane Austen to make you feel better. Ashlynn snuggled with me and before I knew it both boys were in my lap watching too.

Maybe I won't mention that part to Randy.

Pretty soon they were neck deep in the plot and wanted to know "why is she crying", "do they have swords", "is he riding his horse to a fight", "where'd Mr. Darcy go?", etc, etc.

Yes, included in my three and five year old boys vocabulary are Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennett. Hey, at least they were asking about swords.....

Cool it off mommy.

Gage suddenly kicked the habit of sucking his thumb right before I left for San Diego. It was such a shock, I mean this kid loves his thumb like I love chocolate chip cookies. The day I flew home, however, he had picked it back up-apparently he missed his momma!

In an effort to recreate the success, I started applying the no bite nail polish to his thumb to "remind" him not to put it in his mouth. This has been interesting to say the least.

Every few hours he runs up to me, "Mommy, it doesn't taste icky, put the icky on!"

The best was when he got out of bed last night, "Mommy, put the icky on, put the icky on, it doesn't taste icky!" I applied the "icky" stuff to all of his fingers (he insists on this as he started substituting them for his thumb) and then he said, "Cool it off mommy, cool it off!" This was, ofcourse, his way of asking me to dry the stuff.

Evidently he associates everything with food!

Soooooo excited!

We are taking off tomorrow for San Diego and Mikey's wedding! It's just the girls this trip, the boys will be "roughing it" without us.......they'll be camping for the weekend and bow hunting for the big bucks.

I've made lists of what there is to eat, the boys' clothes are washed and put away, the "just in case" meds and measuring spoons are on the counter. If I missed something, they will survive, Randy does run into burning buildings and save lives for a living, so surely he can handle it.

BTW, my camera is totally MIA and I'm trying not to cry about it. Hopefully it will turn up by noon tomorrow......

More like an hour.

An organizational guru once wrote, "when organizing your time and prioritizing your to do list, if something takes less than two minutes do it right away".

Here is my question Mr. Guru, what do you do when you have twenty-five "less than two minute things to do"? Spend an hour doing them or block an hour of time when you actually have the time to get them done??

Just my deep thought for the day.

Forever and ever.

Ryder's letter for this week is M. His curriculum focuses on the moon and emphasizes that we are like the moon and Jesus is like the sun; we have no light on our own, but are a reflection of His light. As I was reading some verses to him and explaining this he stopped me and said, "Mom, I need to be the light, I need to have Jesus in my life!"

We held hands and prayed that Jesus would be his heart and with a big smile on his face he told everyone he saw yesterday, "I asked God into my heart forever and ever!"

Forever and ever....with Jesus in his heart. Yeah, it was a great day.

Where does it all come from???

That is the question I asked myself as I looked over my finally folded laundry. Honestly, had it been that long since I had washed? Everyone's respective piles were stacked precariously next to each other and one wrong removal of a shirt or shorts would send the whole lot tumbling! My inner math junkie started to process:

4 kids X 1 set of clothes per day (2) X 1 set of jammies per day (2) X 4 days between washings =

64 pieces of clothing.....Plus underwear and socks....plus mine and Randy's clothes!

Now if I were to go, say, five or six days between loads we'd be looking at around 100 and I only have four kids.

I do not wonder why all I see is laundry, laundry everywhere. Mom, it's no wonder with seven kids our laundry room was NEVER empty of clothes-clean or dirty!

How to burn a gajillion calories:

Let's see if you can guess how I just burned an entire days worth of calories:


A. Went for a super long run and got chased by a pit bull most of the time.

B. Did an entire week's worth of P90X dvds while talking on the phone to my sister.

C. Hit the elliptical machine, lifted weights and finished up with the treadmill.

D. Changed the sheets on the boys' bunk beds.



If you guessed D, you would be correct! Seriously, every time I change the sheets I don't wonder why I only do it like four times a year or unless absolutely necessary (you know, puking and that sort of thing). If the bunk bed didn't fit so well and if the room was a little bigger and if.....

Next time I want to wrestle and burn calories I'll just lay on the floor and let the kids attack me. It would for sure be easier.

As promised....

Sorry for the delay on Ryder's haircut pictures, but these pesky little visitors named fever and green snot came to visit us. They are very ill mannered and must be super neglected by their parents because they don't want to leave. I've tried wiping them away, bribing them away with medication, pumping them with fluids until they are flushed out and only offering green vegetables at every meal. "No, we won't go, we will not go!", is all I keep hearing (in the form of coughs, whining and sniffling, ofcourse).

So, pardon the delay, without further ado.....

Before:

After:

The faces are all Ryder, that boy doesn't quite get the "smile and look at the camera", I must admit I like his way better!