08-18-15 Look-a-likes

08-17-15 Sorry, Third baby.

It must be hard being the third kid, especially when your older siblings are not quite old enough to be self sufficient. That may mean that when your daddy runs out to the store and your mommy is putting your big sister and brother to bed that you might just get left in your walker to wander around the kitchen floor. And it might mean that you might get upset that you are all alone and start to cry. It also might mean that you have older siblings that fight bedtime and don't care that you are screaming your little (or oversized) head off and take their good old time crawling into bed. And it's possible that this routine will take so long and you will cry so much that you will have no other choice but to fall asleep in your walker on the kitchen floor. 

Sorry third baby. 

08-16-15 Such a large head!

08-15-15 Freezer Meal Workshop

My sister-in-law Laura and I signed up to do a Wildtree freezer meal workshop with our friend, Chelsea, who is a new Wildtree consultant. She sent us the shopping list and this morning we headed to the store. Davey had the boys and Tim had the older kids, so it was just Laura, me, and the babies! 

Technically these photos were from the first stop of the day when we dropped by Office Depot to get the rest of C's school supplies. I'd like to note that she has to bring sixteen glue sticks to school. That sounds insane to me, but I've been told by multiple people that this is completely normal. 

After that we did our food shopping and finally got back to the house to do prep for the workshop this evening. The workshop consisted of making ten meals to put in the freezer when we were done. The hope is that it will make weeknight dinners much easier. 

We laid out all the ingredients.

(The salted caramel peanuts were for munching, though if they could figure out a way to add them to a dinner recipe, I would be on board with that!)

And we gathered all the meat. 

That's a lot of meat! (Remember we were prepping twenty meals, ten for each family.)

First the veggies. 

Lots of chopping and bagging.

Then we added the meats and other ingredients. 

Next we filled several coolers and headed over to Chelsea's house for the last of the assembly. She had instructions and the remaining ingredients. We spent time going though products and assembling our bags. 

By the time we were finished we had ten healthy and (hopefully) tasty meals each!

Thank you Chelsea for all the work you put into this evening! It was fun and I am looking forward to trying the meals! 

08-14-15 Diaper head

I just spent the past half hour trying to wear Baby E out so that I can go to bed. It didn't work. He just wants to chat and giggle. 

Yes, he's wearing a diaper on his head. I'm bored... And tired!

Hopefully tomorrow will be more interesting than today :)

08-13-15 There's no such thing as a stupid question... Except there is...

Whoever said there is no such thing as a stupid question apparently never spent an entire day with a three year old... Or a few hours... Not even twenty minutes. Because if they did they would know that three year olds ask a lot of questions, and yes... Some of the questions are stupid. 

For example...

This morning Big E walked into my bedroom while I was drying my hair, "Mommy, are you awake?"

And then he looked out the window and proceeded to ask, "Is it light outside?"

This evening I was cooking dinner. "What are we having?" "Hamburgers." "What's inside the hamburger?" "Um... Hamburger." 

This is just a small sampling of the silly questions that pepper my day. But since C is now to the point of asking questions like "why do old people die?" and "what's the inside of my eye look like?" and "Are there any ninjas that live near our house? Because if I see someone wearing all black I want to call them a ninja," I am sometimes thankful for the silly questions whose answers come easily. Yes, I'm awake. Yes, it's light outside. And The only thing inside this hamburger is, in fact, hamburger.

Let's save death, anatomy, and ninjas for another day. 

08-12-15 The Four Person Selfie

Taking a four person selfie is serious business, especially when three of the four people are little and move constantly. But I was really in the mood to get a picture of the four of us, so I set the timer and gave it a shot. 

Seriously kids, there should be four of us in this picture. Back up!

Ok that's a little better, but clearly Baby E isn't thrilled...

Wahoo! We are all in the picture!!! Wait... Baby E? What's wrong?!?

Clearly Baby E is not a team player. Get it together buddy! Happy selfies! 

I gave up, that's the best I was gonna get!

08-11-15 We miss Daddy!

Tim has been gone for a few nights now for work so my mom and sister have come to stay with us while he's away. They have been watching the kids during the day, which has been a huge blessing. But we really do miss having Tim here and we are looking forward to him coming home tomorrow. The kids keep asking about him. Last night they crawled into my bed and took his empty spot!!

Boys are funny! This was his preferred method of TV watching this evening. 

This little fellow has become obsessed with food and is eating constantly. Maybe his waistline is trying to catch up with his head, 

This little girl loves her Naona, however at this moment I believe she was trying to negotiate her way out of eating her entire dinner, yet still be allowed to have a brownie and ice cream. It didn't work. 

We miss you, Tim!! 

08-10-15 Friendship

My mom and sister watched the kids today at my house. This evening they cooked dinner and invited our dear friend Jeremy over. I measure my friendship with Jeremy in decades, something I can only claim for a small few of my relationships. We first met during our first year of homeschooling. My mother had established a homeschooling group and had invited local families to join us at our house. An introvert to the core, I was nervous about meeting new people, but I realized that not being in public school meant that I would have precious few opportunities to make friends, so that afternoon I decided to step out of my shell and be bold. People started showing up at my house, kids of all ages, and I looked at them and thought, "ok, these are now my friends" and set about the business of getting to know them. (Of course it helped that I had a good friend next to me, that turned into my best friend and eventually my sister in law!)

Jeremy was one of the first kids to walk in. An avid batman fan with a love of Deloreans, it didn't take long for us to hit it off and soon a small group of us were inseparable. We spent every Friday night at his house filming our own version of Batman (which thankfully has never seen the light of day, and hopefully never will unless one of us decides to run for public office!) Over the years our lives have gone in different directions, we've lived in different areas, had different experiences, but when we are in the same room, that same level of ease and comfort exists. We laugh and joke as if no time at all has passed. This evening he even humored C with a game of Candyland, which he won hands down. I'm grateful to have people like him in our lives. We love you, Jeremy! 

08-09-15 Roughhousing

I am well aware that roughhousing is a right of passage for siblings, wrestling and playing on the ground until they wear themselves out, breathless and smiling. My sister and I did it all the time. Unfortunately I'm the kind of mom that sees too many sharp corners and hard surfaces and potential ER visits, so I usually have to walk out of the room when they start. Don't get me wrong, I want them to rough house, I just don't want my mind following every rabbit trail of possibility and in turn ruining their fun. So for now, out of sight out of mind! (That is until they actually do hurt themselves!) 

08-08-15 Me & my crazies

When we got home from vacation late late Sunday night we walked in, put the kids to bed, unloaded the car and dumped it all in our living room before falling into bed ourselves. And that is where our stuff sat all week. So today was cleaning and organizing day. Tim had to work so he left this morning,  which left me and the kids. I ran some laundry, did some dishes, put away about 80% of the stuff, and then like all good procrastinators, I got bored and had to get out of the house. I thought coffee would do the trick, so I packed up my band of crazies and headed to Starbucks. But along the way I realized that it was noon, and my crazies would soon be hungry. So I thought we'd drive through somewhere, get food, and go to the park. But all of a sudden my group of crazies had to use the bathroom, so we pulled into McDonalds and took care of business. Since we were there we ordered food and the kids noticed the play place. Ugh. I hate those things. Germ factories!!! However there were no other kids and it was about 186 degrees outside so I conceded they could play at McDonalds. Shudder. They had fun, I survived, we were all sanitized after we left. 

I still needed Starbucks... But they would want something too... So I swung by Rita's (cause I'm an awesome mom like that) and thoroughly sugared them up during what should have been nap time. With my children consuming unholy amounts of sugar I snuck into Starbucks for my much needed frapaccino. And since caffeine loves company, I picked up a couple of drinks for friends and headed on my way. After dropping off the first drink I took my fully sugared, un-napped van full of crazies to visit Ms. Rebecca. Bearing gifts of caffeine and baby cuddles, we visited for a couple of hours before heading home.

But now I had a dilemma. Too late for a nap... Too early for bedtime. Ugh. Did I just shoot myself in the foot? There were no obvious meltdowns so I opted to keep them up. I made dinner while they watched Baby Einstein. Yes, of all the things they could choose to watch they landed on that. Did I mention they were tired? 

I made dinner. Oh no! Still too early for bedtime. So a walk/bike ride to the 'zagebo' park would do them in. Only one rule... Mom's not carrying any bikes. At all. You want it, you drag it. Off we went. 20 minutes at the gazebo park did the trick. By the time they were home they only required a small snack and a story. Now they are tucked nicely in bed and I am rocking Baby E to sleep next to me. 

It might not have been the most productive day, but I did get coffee and I got to spend a few hours with a dear friend. I'd say it was time well spent!

Playing at the beach last night...

08-07-15 The Last Batch... I think...