'Tis The Season!

When you have children in school, this April/May time of year is really busy!  Honestly, the Christmas season doesn't hold a candle to the madness that takes over my schedule as the school year begins to wind down.

Take Tuesday night for one example, the 3 younger kids were supposed to have swim lessons from 5:30-6:00pm.  The 11 year old had swim team practice from 6:00-7:30pm.  But, the 11 year old also had New Student Night at the middle school he'll attend next year at 5:30pm.  And the 6 year old was in a musical at the elementary school at 7pm, meaning he needed to be at the school by 6:30pm and someone really needed to be saving seats by 6:25pm for the show!

Is your head spinning?  'Cause mine sure was!  Needless to say, we couldn't do it all!  Swim lessons and swim team practice were missed.  The night was devoted to Middle School Orientation First Grade Musical.  And even that created crazy logistics.  My husband had to leave work early to come home and stay with the 3 youngest kids so I could take the oldest to his middle school night and then my husband had to take the 6 year old to his musical and save seats (with the 8 and 5 year olds in tow).  Thankfully, my crockpot came through with dinner, the Middle School Night was pretty short and my oldest and I were able to scoot out just in time to catch the start of the First Grade Musical.

I was exhausted by the end of the night, hence the lack of a blog post last night!

But there's no time to rest as there are lots more festivities to come in the next 4 weeks -- Preschool Outdoor Day, 5th Grade Bake Sale, science fair, a 1st grade field trip, safety patrol party, 5th grade service project, Field Day, 5th grade swim party, a dance recital, 5th grade graduation. . . I'm sure I'm forgetting something!

And tomorrow is a certain adorable 6 year old's birthday!!  So there has been some added crazy preparing to celebrate my soon-to-be-7-year-old guy.

Which is why I was ridiculously nuts with joy today in the Target when I was able to find 24 Angry Birds cupcakes for his school class birthday celebration tomorrow!  It was the 3rd store I went to (with my 5 year old tagging along) looking for the cupcakes ready-made (because, of course, I was not organized enough to order in advance).  One store had no cupcakes ready-made, another store had tons of Frozen themed cupcakes but that seemed too girly for my son to hand out at school! But, the Angry Birds are perfect and the fact that there were 24 of them to serve his class of 23 students was a gift straight from God to me today!

Summer will be here soon!  Summer will be here soon!  I keep repeating that mantra in my head.  

And we will have days where we don't have to be anywhere at all!  Days when I don't need to remember to dress a child in a yellow shirt or if I signed up for snacks or drinks.  Days when we will stay in our pajamas ALL DAY LONG!

Now is the season to enjoy the festivities and celebrate my people!

No wonder I'm so tired today!

We did, in fact, tackle cleaning out the garage over the weekend:

The children helped with the hauling-everything-out-of-the-garage step

Meanwhile, the dog did this inside the house:

Now I hesitate to show the "after" picture of the garage clean out because it doesn't really look much better but TRUST ME, it is!!  We threw away about 12 bags of trash!  And, besides the huge accomplishment of creating room to park one car in the garage, we now KNOW WHERE EVERYTHING IS in the garage!  No more going to Home Depot and buying another paintbrush forever!!  We have a gazillion new ones that were all bought because we didn't know we already had some!

After:

Then we moved on to the equally insurmountable tasks of cleaning out the kids closets and SCIENCE FAIR!  There were all manner of paper airplanes covering my house, but you will relieved to know we have put to rest a great debate in the arena of science!  A paper airplane made out of cardstock paper flies farther than one made out of printer paper or construction paper!

Now I need a weekend to recover from the weekend!

Can You Even Stand The Excitement?!!

Well, there is just no end to the excitement around here!

Today, Little Girl lost her other top front tooth giving her a less lopsided smile.  

 And by "lost" I mean my husband tied a string around it, pulled it, and that thing popped out of her mouth with such force that it flew across the room and bounced off the wall!  In fact, it's hard to say it all happened so fast, but we think it may have even bounced off two or three different walls!  Thankfully we were able to find the tooth on the floor where it landed, so Little Girl could put it under her pillow.

I know!  I thought that whole thing about tying a string around a loose tooth was just a myth and nobody really did that to get a tooth out, until today.  This is our 4th child and the only one we've ever tried this technique on, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  Little Girl's grown-up tooth was already cutting through behind the baby tooth on top and the dentist told us at the last visit that if we saw that happening we needed to bring her in to have the tooth pulled because the baby tooth would stop the new tooth from moving forward in line where it needed to be and cause a serious orthodontic issue.  So, today when we noticed that permanent tooth coming in right behind that kinda loose baby tooth, we set to work trying to get the baby tooth out on our own rather than facing having to take her to the dentist to have it pulled, where he'd likely have to sedate her.

It also helps that Little Girl is pretty brave and tough.  Our oldest child wouldn't even let us go near his loose teeth when he was this age!

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In other excitement this week, we welcomed new roly-poly pets into our household and then a day later mourned their passing.

My 8 year old daughter came out of school carrying a cup with two roly-polys she'd found in the schoolyard at recess.   She named them "STAAR Test 1" and "STAAR Test 2" because she was taking the State of Texas standardized testing, STAAR Test this week at school.

Here are the roly-polys munching on a piece of apple:

Sadly it may have been the apple that did them in because they died shortly after that tasty snack.

Thankfully my daughter wasn't too sad, "I know where to find lots more at school!" she said.  Then today she had me researching the care and keeping of roly-polys on The Internet so maybe we can keep them alive next time.

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And as if that wasn't all exciting enough, on Wednesday I discovered something awesome!  

I bought a rug for my laundry room/back door entry a few months ago at Target.  It was only around $30 and I really loved the pattern and how it livened up my space.   But, as one might expect, a few months of 4 kids plus one dog and 2 parents traipsing over it had left it rather dirty looking.  I was sad because I'd really been enjoying the rug and I wasn't sure it would hold up in the wash, after all it was only $30 for a decent sized rug!  But, I got brave on Wednesday and washed it on gentle and even dried it on low in the dryer and lo and behold it not only held up through the washing, but it looks brand new again!

Oh, how I love a good Target product!  Really, Target, you've outdone yourself!

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As is only fitting to keep up the excitement, our weekend plans include some massive cleaning-out projects -- the garage and the kids' closets!! 

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Happy Friday!

Great Shorts for Little Girls to Wear Under Dresses and Skirts

I don't know about where you live, but where we are, it has finally decided to settle into warm weather every day.  I love that my girls like to wear dresses and skirts often, but it gets too hot for leggings under them and my girls are active, bar flipping, monkey bar swinging, climbing girlies, and I do not want their panties showing to the entire playground!

So, I've always had my girls wear soft shorts under their dresses if they are not wearing leggings.  A few years ago I bought several perfect ones at Target, super soft and the right length to not hang out the bottom of the skirts.  But, then my older daughter outgrew them and I couldn't find anymore at Target.  Thankfully, last year I discovered the Cartwheel Shorts at Children's Place and they are still selling them this year!  During a 40% off sale, I stocked up in various colors for my girls.  Just be warned, I order a size or even 2 up because the shorts seem to run small, that or they are just designed to be super skin tight, but that would not be comfortable for my daughters.  I size up and they are great, loose enough for easy walking, but tight enough not to fall off their waists! 

Anyone else a mama to a girly girl who loves dresses but also loves the monkey bars?!!

Attempting To Get An Easter Photo of My Four Children

Honestly, I think brokering a peaceful end to the Russia/Ukraine conflict would be easier than photographing my 4 children!

Take 1 ("Very funny, very funny, kids, now cut it out!"):

Take 2:

Take 3:

Take 4 ("Why are you guys linking arms?!!"):

Take 5:

Take 6 ("No pushing your sister!  And Little Girl, your hands do not always have to be on your hips for pictures!"):

Take 7 ("Nobody feels sorry for you, 3rd Child, even if you can make the most pitiful face"):

Take 8 (My 6 year old son is fairly normal-looking finally, but now Little Girl is NOT happy!  We call that face the "Ethiopian scowl" and it definitely conveys a message!):

Take 9 (we're happy now, but could we get a little less happy?):

 Take 10 ("No, 3rd Child, still not the face I was hoping for"):

Take 11 (Look at my younger son's face, as if it's all sheer torture -- "Torture for me, Buddy, not you!"):

"I GIVE UP!!!!!!"

Does Easter Change Anything?

I've been studying Revelation with my Bible study group since September.  Every verse read, examined, and reflected upon.

As odd as Revelation can be at times, mostly what I've been left with is HOPE.  I knew of the hope we have as Christians before, but now it is more real to me.

Just a couple weeks ago our memory verse was what I called "the longest memory verse in the history of memory verses".  It was acutally 2 verses and I had to write them several different times as a part of my Bible lesson that week, so many times that my hand actually began to ache.

"I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."”  Revelation 21:3-4

Do you hear the hope in those verses?  No more death, nor crying, nor pain! 

I really cannot even bear to think about Jesus's mother watching him be crucified.  Such tremendous pain!

I think of all the great pain that is in our world today.

The mothers who cry out in anguish as their children's bodies are pulled from a sunken ferry boat.

The mothers in Ethiopia who watch their babies die of starvation.

I think of the evening recently when I had to sit down next to my 11 year old son and tell him that the teacher he loves so much who left his class 2 months ago when her twin babies were born very prematurely, that one of her baby boys, who we prayed so hard for and cheered on over a month in updates from the neonatal ICU, had died.

And some days it just feels like too much.

But, those are the days our great hope in Jesus is the most important to cling to!

I read the Rev. 21:3-4 verses to my son as he blinked back the tears.  And also, Isaiah 65:19-20, "I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed"

And I got to tell him, "It won't always be this way!  God tells us there will come a time when babies will not die!"  Oh how glad I was to have those Bible verses to share with him!

We traveled to Oklahoma for an Easter celebration with my husband's side of the family and on Saturday, that day between the anniversary of Jesus's death and his resurrection, that time that must have felt so dark and painful for Jesus's disciples and loved ones all those years ago, my husband picked up the decades old Bible that belonged to his grandmother.  He flipped through pages not finding many markings, but when he got to Revelation 21, there it was!  His grandmother, who is no longer with us, had marked the great hope of Revelation 21:4!

Today, the Monday after the Resurrection Sunday, it is tempting to go back to life as usual, to live with my to-do list in the forefront of my mind.  But, as I walk the halls of the nursing home with my own mama, she is no longer able to talk to me and yet she smiles occasionally in response so I know she is still there buried under the dementia that claimed so much of her life at too young an age, I help steady her steps and smile back at her with the great hope that things will not always be this way.  There will come a day when the pain of this current world will be no more!

Our Savior lives!  And that same power that raised Him from the dead is bringing heaven to earth where God will dwell with us! Rev. 21:3

Hope changes things!  Easter changed everything!

What Dyeing Easter Eggs Looks Like At Our House

Madeline, the Goldendoodle, sees to it that she is a part of all the interesting activities that go on around our house, especially activities involving food!

So, it really was not a surprise that she managed to make her way right into the middle of the Easter egg dyeing!

Thankfully we did not end up with a pink or green or blue dog, although, I don't know, maybe that would have been kind of cute!

And, no, our eggs did not turn out like this: