Beautiful Spring Flowers + My 4 Children Does Not Equal Good Pictures

The azaleas in our front yard have been blooming beautifully for a few weeks and as usual I've attempted pictures of the kids in front of the flowers and failed.  It's like I'm in denial about the impossibility of this task.

Sure, I can get a decent picture of 1 kid + flowers:

2 kids + flowers:

Even 3 kids + flowers:

But not 4 kids + flowers!  Nope, not gonna happen!

And my favorite:

The 9 year old daughter fussing at the 7 year old brother for not cooperating for the pictures.  That is real life right there, folks!

The Expiration Date Police

An unanticipated perk of my kids getting older is that I now have expiration date police roaming my house.  I have no idea why it is such an obsession of my oldest two children in particular, but they love to catch expired things around our house and make a big deal about it.

The 11 year old recently discovered that ALL, yes all, the tubes of Neosporin in our household were expired

and by expired I mean 02/2009 kind of expired!

Who knew that stuff expired?

And why exactly did we have so many tubes anyway?

The husband and 2 oldest children were not satisfied until they had ridden their bikes to the Walgreens to secure 2 brand new, unexpired tubes of Neosporin.  Because Heaven-forbid that we'd be without for one more day when we've been using expired Neosporin for the past 6 years!

Baking with 4 Kids and a 1 Crazy Dog

My 4 kids made Christmas cookies today.  For the first year, it wasn't total chaos; they were actually really good at the rolling and cutting out of cookies!

Do not fear I'll have to change the name of this blog, there was still chaos in the kitchen due to the dog desperately trying to help make cookies (she is in all 4 of the pictures below, although very hard to spot in the 2nd one):

Would anyone like a 4 year old goldendoodle for Christmas?  I can drop her on your doorstep complete with a large red bow!

Evidence that I have no pride remaining

I'm thinking this is a sign that I have no pride left at all, but I'm not completely sure.  What do you think?  

I help my 6 year old pass the time during an older sibling's swim practice by letting her fix my hair:

And not only do I sport that lovely hairstyle right out in public for all the world to see, but I let another child (who apparently had their finger in the way) photograph me:

Yes, all the other parents sitting nearby think I'm nuts!

When you cut down your Christmas tree at a tree farm. . .

Cutting down your own Christmas tree is so quaint and beautiful and lovely!

You bring it home and your children decorate it to the sounds of Christmas carols playing in the background.  And the whole family marvels, "Didn't we cut down a great tree?!!"

AND THEN,

one Week later the plague of flies hatches from said real tree inside your house and the windowsill behind your tree looks like this:

Tons of dead flies!! (And I had just vacuumed that windowsill last week!)  Now, that's the picture you won't see on Facebook or Pintrest, but that's real life right there folks!  

No candy-coating it here, real Christmas tree may = a whole host of critters added to your household!

Next year, just give me a plastic tree from a box, thank you very much!

100% Authentic Re-Enactments of The First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not even officially here yet, and I've already enjoyed all manner of festivities!

The kindergarten Thanksgiving lunch I attended today with over 100 pilgrims and Indians:

Now, I was not there at the very first Thanksgiving feast but I feel certain there were not Chick-Fil-A nuggets nor Capri Suns, however, I'm sure a nugget tray and a little fruit punch would have been a welcomed addition to their Thanksgiving bounty!

And then tonight, from the comfort of the couch in my living room, there was a Thanksgiving play put on by my three youngest children who played the parts of a pilgrim, the turkey, and an Indian.

My favorite part was when the pilgrim caught the turkey!

But, the conversation at dinner when my 9 year old daughter was assigning parts, and the 7 year old, upon being given the part of "The Turkey", lamented that he always got the bad parts, was pretty priceless, too!  But, he rallied and put on an Oscar-worthy performance as The Turkey, complete with lots of "Gobble!  Gobble!"s. 

Wishing you the happiest of Thanksgivings!

Elephant Pumpkins and Doll Discrimination, It's All Here!

There are some weeks that go by and I am so busy but at the end of it there is nothing tangible to show for all the work.

But, not this week, folks!  This week I have this:

 

Yes, I helped my 7 year old turn a pumpkin into an elephant for his school project where they were to decorate a pumpkin to look like a book character.  He chose Horton from Horton Hatches the Egg as his character. Let it be known that I typically do not assist quite so much with my children's school projects, but seriously, for this one?  What 7 year old can turn a pumpkin into a book character by themselves??  And my little guy and I did have fun doing this project together.

Grab a glue gun, some grey spray paint, an old grey sock stuffed with stuffing and a wire coat hangar, some construction paper ears, googly eyes, and a felt cut out mouth and you too could have a pumpkin elephant!  What better thing to add to your Halloween decor?!!

This is another item I've added to my arsenal of Mommy-skills, the ability to turn a pumpkin into an elephant!  Cinderella's fairy godmother's got nothing on me!

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We have every other year friend birthday parties for our kids and on the off years they can choose a special activity with a parent or our family, like attending a professional sports event, visiting an amusement park, or the hotel overnight I recently did with my older daughter.  To celebrate Little Girl's birthday this past week, I took her and my 9 year old daughter to the American Girl store.  

We had lunch with their dolls, the dolls are given their own seat and dishes!  

Then we had the dolls hair done, which Little Girl's doll REALLY needed as she had done her own "styles" on her poor doll and it was looking really ratted and messy.  For a bargain $10 (and hear me on this, NOTHING else is a bargain at that store, but getting her old doll's hair fixed back to nice for only $10 was a steal!) Daisy the doll even got to sit in a salon chair with a cape and get her hair styled.  Little Girl loved watching her doll's hair get fixed.  (The look on the stylist's face is hilarious, the doll's hair really was that bad!)

But, that sweet lady was able to work wonders and Daisy the doll is back to cute curly pigtails!

We had such a fun afternoon, I really should have just ended it there, but I'd told Little Girl that as part of her birthday gift from us she could pick out a new doll from the store.  Oh sweet mercy, I cannot tell you how many times my older daughter and I walked around that store with Little Girl looking at all the choices!  Little Girl would enthusiastically fall in love with a doll, settle on it, only to change her mind to a different doll one display over!  Then she'd pick a doll because she liked the outfit it was dressed in and we had a time explaining that the doll was not dressed in the outfit she came in, so she should not pick the doll based on the dress the doll was wearing, that dress was sold separately for $40!!

And don't even get me started on the little episode where my 9 year old daughter tried to convince her little sister to get "Addie", the doll with "brown skin, like yours".  We broke down all kinds of cultural and racial barriers right there in the American Girl store and Little Girl left with a fair skinned, blonde-haired doll, proving to the world that you don't have to look like your doll to love her!

Here she is with her old and new dolls:

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Happy Friday, Friends!!

One Hard-Working Dog

One day last week my husband had jury duty and needed to be downtown at 8am.  In order to have time to drive downtown, park, and make it in to the jury assembly, he needed to leave our house considerably before 8am, thus leaving me to handle the bulk of the craziness that is getting our 4 kids up and ready for school, 4 lunches made, and 4 kids dropped off to 2 different schools.

I got up extra early and did all kinds of work and logistics handling.  After I'd gotten all the kids successfully to school, I did the dishes, and last minute preparations for the 9am leadership meeting I had for the Bible study I teach.  But, before I left the house, I walked back through my bedroom to grab something I needed for the day, and what did I find, but this sight:

Somehow all the hard work I'd done that morning made the non-hard-working dog feel all the more wrong!

She gets to go back to bed?  And on MY bed, no less?

Photographing Four Children

I was going through pictures recently, and I came across these taken after my oldest son's 5th grade graduation at the end of May.

This string of pics can otherwise be known as why I hire a professional photographer once a year -- to get just ONE GOOD PHOTO OF THE FOUR OF YOU!  Is it too much to ask, really??!

Jeans Shopping With My 11 Year Old Son

I fell into a panic last night that our Ethiopia trip was coming up so soon and I was not ready, so rather than blogging I spent time last night ordering 24 bottles of nail polish, 10 soccer balls, 300 balloons, rocket balloons, bottles of bubbles, and jump ropes.  

What?  Doesn't everyone take 24 bottles of nail polish with them when they travel to Africa?!

We'll be spending time with kids in the different care points so the nail polish is for painting the kids fingernails and all the other stuff is for playing with the kids.  Nothing breaks down language and cultural barriers and allows connection quite like nail polish and rocket balloons!

Oh, and travel toilet paper!  I ordered some travel toilet paper.  You know you are in for an adventure when your packing requires travel toilet paper!

 

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Then this morning I panicked again when I realized that the 11 year old, who is going with us to Ethiopia, had outgrown all his jeans, and jeans are pretty much what he needs to wear every day of our trip.  Guess I should have thought of that little detail sooner, because it has been months since we've worn jeans around here, but really, for none of them to fit, the boy has done some growing!

So, tonight after dinner, the 11 year old got the pleasure of me taking him to Old Navy to do some jeans shopping.  Typically I buy the kids clothes over The Internet, once they ship I have the kids try them on at home, and then I return to the store what doesn't fit.  Therefore, my kids have been totally spoiled and have not spent much time in dressing rooms or hunting for their size at a store.

My son got an education tonight!  He is now very well versed in the different sizes and styles of Old Navy jeans.  You have the 5 different styles - super skinny, skinny, straight, boot-cut, and loose.  Then within each style there are sizes (like 10, 12, etc. that correlate loosely to the child's next age).  AND THEN there is the further break down of each size into slim, regular, and husky!

Needless to say, I had the boy try on about eleventy-million pairs of jeans before we figured out exactly which combination was right for him!  12 regular boot-cut, 14 regular straight, 14 slim boot-cut, 12 slim loose fit, and on and on!

All while I stood outside the dressing room door.  Because he's an 11 year old boy, you don't get to go in there anymore as his mom, which is a little sad.  But, OF COURSE I was right outside the door to his dressing room and he had instructions to come out as soon as he had the jeans on.  I certainly wasn't leaving the judging of acceptable fit up to my son (my daughters, yes, my sons, no)!

So, while I stared at this:

A lady walked by holding her baby boy and I thought, "Just wait, you blink and he'll be trying on jeans with you on the other side of the door!"

Really, my son was good-natured about the whole thing and even suggested some of his own size combinations to try, "Mom, maybe I should try the 12 slim loose fit."  Don't even get us started on the fact that there is such thing as a slim in the loose style or a husky in the skinny style!  

I think it would have been less complicated to become rocket scientists, but we did discover the 11 year old's best size right now is a 12 regular in either the bootcut or straight fit.

My boy reached his personal wall in shopping with his mom when I began laying out various jeans accross the floor in Old Navy so that I could compare colors once we'd definitely decided on the size and style we needed.  "Look, this one is darker.  And this one has the faded parts there along the thigh." I said as he began to twitch and looked around to see if anyone was staring at us.

Then as I dug way into the back of the shelves to find certain colors I deemed best in his size, he began begging me, "Mom, let's just get these!  I like these!"

When I complained that one pair had what I referred to as a "wrinkled fly" and we needed to look for a different pair, I sensed that I was pushing the whole shopping thing a little too far.  I saw the look in my son's eyes that I've seen in my husband's eyes many times over the years.  It is the I-have-to-get-out-of-this-store-right-now! look and I knew then that it was indeed time to go.  I brandished my 20% off coupon and headed to the check-out.  As we left the store with count them THREE pairs of jeans that fit the boy for a total of $36 with tax, I congratulated both of us on a successful jeans shopping expedition!


May your weekend be as merry!  

In case the chaos wasn't high enough already, we now have a bright blue dog!

Right now I'm in the uncomfortable situation of re-entry into the real world after an awesome week-long Florida vacation and simultaneously, furiously planning and preparing for our upcoming Ethiopia mission (vision) trip.  The worlds coul not be more opposite, and I do feel huge gratefulness at being able to experience both.  But, the abject poverty so many people live in, children very much like my youngest daughter who was born in Ethiopia, has a way of making you feel guilty for your excees.  But, I'll take the uncomfortableness of stradling both worlds because really I see God there in the need more abundantly than here in the excess.

On to a lighter subject,

I taught my 11 year old to make quesadillas, which happens to be the favorite lunch of all 4 of my kids.  Can you appreciate the awesomeness of this situation?

And for a really, really huge 1st world problem:

The dog went to the groomer this week.  She left our house looking like this:

and returned looking like this:

Quite the transformation, right?  It's her "summer cut" I keep saying, but really it's her my-fur-was-super-matted-and-my-human-did-not-want-to-pay-the-comb-out-fee cut.

But, here's where the 1st world problem comes in, we did not even get to enjoy our clean, crisp dog for 18 hours before she somehow managed to get a large blue spot on her backside!

No, that is not a glare or blip from the camera.  Her fur is really bright blue in a large spot on her hind leg!

What in the world?

The 6 of us humans have put our heads together and the only explaination we can come up with is that she rubbed up against our chalkboard wall that currently has a large blue drawing!

But, unlike typical chalk, it does not rub off the dog!

Really, the ridiculousness of my life never ceases to amaze me.
 

What the First 28 Minutes of My Day Used To Be

In case it wasn't clear already, I've been going through my blog archives a bit lately!  Here's a post that is definitely a whole lot more hilarious to me now that it is 4 years later and I never wake up to children with poop accidents anymore!  From Jan. 27, 2010:

13 Snippets from my morning:

7:00 am - (It is a non-Shred work-out day because I plan to run later in the morning with the jogging stroller.) I wake-up to the sounds of feet pounding down the stairs. I hear my 2 year old telling my husband who is already in the kitchen, "There's dirt in my bed! Somebody need get dirt out!" I instantly know it is not "dirt" in the toddler's bed, but likely poop from an overflowing diaper. Pull covers up to my chin. Do I have to get up?

7:03 am - Realize no other mom is showing up today, so I must do the job. I get up, put on running clothes and begin working on packing 6 year old's lunchbox with all his favorite things, just like the day before.

7:10 am - Husband tells me, "He didn't eat any of his lunch yesterday. I unpacked it all last night and just some of the bread was eaten, nothing else."

7:13 am - I'm feeling the joy of packing a lunch that may return to me uneaten. Instead of writing, "Have a SUPER day. Love, Mom" on the napkin for the lunchbox, I write, "EAT YOUR LUNCH! Love, Mom"

7:14 am - Pour myself some cereal and coffee and head into dining room where my 3 children and husband are already happily eating breakfast.

7:15 am - Am OVERWHELMED by the smell of poop! And amazed that everyone is eating and nobody seems at all bothered by the smell! "Does Toddler have a dirty diaper?" I ask (Toddler still wears a diaper for sleeping). "Don't you smell that?!!"

7:16 am - Husband does not, in fact, smell that, but does manage to lean over to check the diaper status of the toddler sitting next to him. "He's not wearing a diaper!"

7:17 am - The realization hits. Toddler got his bath early last night and was put in jammies without a diaper since he'd still be awake for a while. Then when we put him to bed we didn't think to put the diaper on since he usually gets the diaper with the jammies. Suddenly the "dirt" in his bed makes perfect sense to me. My husband still doesn't get it. "Yeah, I didn't know what he meant about the 'dirt'"

7:18 am - Because I have already poured the milk on my cereal and not had even one swallow of coffee, I opt to try to finish a few bites of breakfast before dealing with the situation.

7:19 am - Toddler is done eating, gets out of his chair, and comes over to me. Toddler wants to sit on my lap! Smell is overwhelming! Breakfast is over!

7:21 am - Toddler gets hosed off in the bathtub.

7:25 am - I head into Toddler's room in total fear of what I'll find.

7:28 am - Thankfully not too bad, as poop hunts go anyway (yes, having 3 children it is not my 1st experience with such things). Fairly easily cleaned up, all the while explaining to my 4 year old daughter why there was poop on the floor. Sheets and jammies in the washer on hot with the color-safe bleach. Bathtub needs a bleach treatment, too!

What can I say? It's a glamorous job!

Remembering Operation Rescue Stuffed Bulldog

Anybody been reading long enough to remember when I used to post in "Not Me Monday" and write about things I did NOT do (but really did)?



From January 31, 2010:

I did NOT display extremely poor parental judgment skills and allow my toddler to take his large, stuffed bulldog (aka. "Big Duke") security item into the place where my older kids have swim lessons.
Somehow in the craziness of drying off 2 kids, helping them get dressed, talking with one swim teacher about the next month's lessons, keeping the certificate of 1 child for a swim level completed absolutely dry, taking 2 kids to the restroom, and supervising 3 on the playground, we did NOT leave Big Duke behind at swim lessons!

Big Duke was NOT discovered missing at bedtime.

I did NOT make a phone call the next morning that went something like this, "Do you have our stuffed bulldog?"
I was NOT really having to work to keep from giggling and thinking of this book (Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity) the whole time!

My husband did NOT suggest I just wait until next Thursday when my kids have swim lessons again to get Big Duke since the place is not real close to our house.

When my 2 year old looked at me and said, "But I LOVE Big Duke!" I did NOT completely cave and drive over there in the rain Friday morning.
I did NOT return to my car and text my husband, "Operation Rescue Stuffed Bulldog = Success"!

And after all that. . .

There is absolutely, positively NO WAY at our very next errand 15 minutes later, I let my toddler take Big Duke into the Sam's store!

And into my older son's basketball game the next day!

Seriously, what's wrong with me?!!!

Maybe it's this. Just look at that smile on my little guy's face, so happy to be with his buddy Big Duke in the Sam's Club!Reunited and it feels so good!! (Don't ever say the 70s didn't bring us any good music when you've got a song like that)

A Surprising Blog Post That Has Seen A Lot of Traffic

I rarely look at the stats for my blog, because I just don't have the time, but when I do, I'm typically surprised by the posts that have seen the most traffic.

For example, do you know one of my top ten most viewed blog posts is "Trapped in a McDonald's Playland!" from July 27, 2009?  According to Blogger, it has been viewed 1,753 and counting!

Maybe there is an unknown epidemic of children getting trapped in McDonald's playlands and parents are often Googling the search term "trapped in mcdonald's playland" because if you do that, my blog is the 4th result that comes up!

It's too bad that I had no idea at the time I wrote that blog post that it would be read so much because really my post offers no real useful advice on getting one's trapped child out of the McDonald's playland, unless you count "send an older sibling up after them" as helpful!

Here's the original post in all it's glory (from July 27, 2009):

We nearly never go to McDonald's, but we traveled to visit family this past weekend, and stopped to eat at what my kids call "Old McDonald's" on the car trip there. I most certainly did NOT laugh so hard at the following incident!

It was NOT my 2 year old who climbed to the top of the playland and began loudly calling, "Mommy, come here! Come here Mommy!" 

Did you see his little face and hands in the center of that last picture? Here's the zoomed out pic. so you can see how stuck he is right in the middle of this biggest-McDonald's-playland-I've-ever-seen! Seriously, there was no easy way up there and no easy way out!

Thankfully he has older siblings because I was wearing a dress and I'm a bit claustrophobic. I've done the whole rescuing-a-kid-from-a-playland thing before with my older two and I get a little trapped and panicked feeling up there! My husband played the "I'm 6 feet tall; I can't get in there" card. So we sent our 6 year old up there to rescue his brother. His first attempt was unsuccessful. Next we sent our nearly 4 year old daughter up. Success!! She was able to gently talk him up to the top of a slide and then he rode down on big brother's lap!

Why is it that my kids as 2 year olds seem to have no trouble scurrying to the top of those things, in fact they do it so fast before we can stop them, but then need help getting down?!!