present and future

Seeing all the cousins playing and running together makes me wounder what it will like if we lived close enough to have them in school together. Imagine Kristen's middle child in a class with my Mr. steel. (evil grin) They are both wild, happy, rambunctious, and have a tendency to transform the truth into a exciting story. My own imagination pictures something like this...
Two 15 year old blond hunky guys coming close to 6ft in height. They both enjoy foot ball but their most favored activity is pulling pranks on the teacher...We will see what life brings our way as far as where our kids will spend all their growing up years at etc. I cant tell you how much fun it has been to run around and play with five boy-o-s. The stage where they let me play with them is so short I want to get in as much as I can. Not too much longer and I will have to crawl through the grass and spy on them as they construct forts and explore the woods. My husband spent his first night in the woods alone, a mile away from anything with only a friend and a shotgun at the age of 12.....hmmmm......it will take more time for me to feel THAT confidant. Then again life does change a persons outlook. For now its all in dreams.

snow pictures

missing persons?

Wow the week we have been here has just flown by! I cant say that school has been as easy. Somehow the allure of snow and cousins is hard to resist. I spent the day driving grandma and grandpa to the dentist. My youngest hesitantly agreed to come with me. He is such a dream when he is alone. All manners and sweetness...until the last 45 minutes when he kept straying off into poop filled conversations. Something I notice about him when we are alone is that he is always thinking of others. He will see things in a store and say how much someone else would like the particular object. One and Two very rarely do that. His heart is so big, I was thankful we had some quiet together. My girl is starting to feel her heart tug for her Nana. It is difficult to share my daughters love, but it is so important. Nana has such a special place in her life. Today she sat on the balcony and heaved out large loud sobs saying "I just started thinking about Nana.." Alligator tears streaked her face as we talked together.
The boys cant get enough of the cousins. All I hear is, "when will we see them????" Tomorrow Greg and I will attempt to attend a bible study with the kids. I remember the last time we did that, all tooo well. I am not online as much considering the fact gma and gpa are computer free.

the flue and you

When it comes to seeing the grandparents in Leavenworth I get a bit germ crazy. Normally I don't care about stuffy noses and cold symptoms. Before we take our trip, my kids aren't allowed to see friends and attend church for at least a week prior to the visit. It sounds obsessive until you realise how important it is for 80-90 year old people to stay well. In my quest for health the kids didn't go to church yesterday. Good thing too because what I witnessed was more than disturbing.

Sunday afternoon my mom cooks a big lunch for the local bible school students. I volunteered to do it yesterday considering it was burgers and she would have had to stand for more than an hour straight. (bad bad for her knees) There I was flipping and chatting with several of the other helpers when I recognised or rather witnessed the disturbing act. One of the ecola students who had been upstairs, obviously had the flue or was very sick. He even said so to my dad before the starting of church. He was now down stairs eating burgers. Did I mention he used his fingers to grab at the tomatoes and cheese....aaaahhh. Boy was I grateful I went before him in line! Not to mention that I left my kids at home.
Ive often observed that when I really don't want my kids to do something like...say...step in a huge pile of doggy poo, as soon as the words "look out for the pooo" depart from my mouth one of them absently places their food into it. Not hugging sick people is defiantly falls into that category, although usually I don't say anything because immediately after whispering, "Now you understand that such and such isn't feeling very good so you need to be careful not to hug or jump on them." they turn, POINT, and repeat everything I have just said in a giant sized voice. Kids you got to love them! We leave this week and will be gone until February. Hopefully I will be able to blog the many crazy and wild adventures the cousins have together.

Thats sock not socks.

wahoo my first sock ever is done done done!! The youngest is more than thrilled to be picked as first recipient. Now to finish the next one. It will be nothing short of a miracle if it ends up matching the first.

library books and hikes

I spent a large portion of my growing up years in northern California. It was a nowhere town in the middle of cattle country, surrounded by practically nothing. My younger brother and I treasure the 6 years spent there and sometimes reminisce of all the goings on which took place. Grass forts, snow for Easter, make believe friends (or in my case the lack of), tadpoles, fishing off the bridge and swimming in the river. My mother had a part time job at the library where we would sit for hours and read. I have dug up a collection of the early readers and slowly bought them from amazon.com and e-bay. They were very fitting to the area (range cattle country) My favorite title was cowboy Sam and Mrs Lilly. On our summer days we went picnicking and hunting arrow heads left from the old west ( no joke) We were fairly untainted by worldly cares, we had no television and only went to school part time. Lets not get the impression that we didn't pick on each other and fight, because we did. When I say untainted, I mean we didn't care what brand of shoe we were wearing or what everyone was doing. Once I was hanging out with a bunch of girls my age 7ish when one of them said," oooh vanilla ice sooo cute." To which I replied," I love vanilla ice cream!" two pairs of eyes shot my direction. One of them said rather snootily.."If you don't know who he is I'M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU." I admit now that im grown,..it waaass really funny. It was a good time, for a time. I'm grateful we didn't do all our growing up there. We had just enough for a happy child hood and good memories for reflecting upon.

stinky

I have a weird nose. I can smell similarity's between objects which are wholly unrelated. Take Cheerios for instance. I like to eat them but I hate the smell. To me they are a cross of dried grass and urine. Usually when my children start eating them I end up looking around for a pee spot. Once when my husband was enjoying a disgusting thing called a kipper snack I absently mentioned its smell was a close resemblance to rotting blood....well HE never ate one again. Whoops. After that I tried hard to curb my comparisons until the other day when he was frying broccoli and chicken up for a wrap. Out of nowhere this horrible baby poo smell smacked my senses like a mac truck. "Eugh! Did you ever notice how much broccoli smells just like baby poo... oops." I looked over to see my husband giving me the 'why on earth are you saying this' look. He shrugged it off this time. I suppose its all the real life feces he deals with in his job.

a big long sigh

This morning I am up at my computer while three happy kids play dress up in their room.Okay not all three, Thomas is looking at a technical book about animal species.(not kidding) Who might I ask exchanged the children from yesterday to the children today? I don't know, but if you read this blog Thank you! I'm fairly sure the parents of these three other children will eventually come looking for them..but in the meantime I am enjoying peace. Yesterday we rented cloudy with a chance of meatballs. It had a funny premise but I found all the food falling from the sky kind of gross. The kids liked it.

We leave in a week for Grandmas house. Its such a special place for us and there is SNOW. Not all this mamby pamby rain and hail which soaks you to the bone whenever you step outside. Lets not forget three cousins who are mirrors of my kids, Becca who keeps me working out in the AM, and hours of warm fires and loving family members. When we drive up in the morning several Starbucks in all their glory await us..mmmmm. Cant wait!

urgh

do you ever have one of those days where you are surrounded by so much grumpy that eventually your cheery mood has melted away and you find that dark cranky clouds have moved into the horizon.
Urgh, that is what today is shaping up to be. I had an awesome work out with Em but after that it all went down hill....Perhaps my youngest flooding the bathroom with clogged toilet water was a sign of things to come. I'm not going to expound any more except to say I think I am going on a drive in the car with just me and the kids, then when everyone falls asleep I can find a little peace in the world..

today and the rest of my life

This am at 7:12ish My youngest decided to move the light...and the fish tank connected to it. Three little flopping fish gulping for oxygen were rescued, a giant 5 gallon water and glass mess was cleaned up out of the carpet (thanks for the carpet cleaner em) and one little boy was found crying in the corner that he was going to jail for the death of goldfish everywhere. He got that idea himself. The only dialog from me to him was, stay out of the room or you will get cut. Some days I just don't know what motivates him. Greg understands. Its good they have each other. As for me,..I'm okay, a little confused as to what kind of battery powers this child, but good.

this one is for kristen

funny the things that happen when you get on the phone......

sunday school and other things

This year I am helping out a friend teach Sunday school. I'm like a support position, really. 2's and 3's are one of those classes that need a bit more help since some of the kids lack the ability to resist licking play dough or gluing the table. Today was a bitter sweet class. Most every kid was there...except Ivan. He was our best student. Yeah so what if he was a year older than everyone else, he always listened and put his stickers exactly where they were supposed to. On the other hand his little brother, who normally throws crayons and gets cranky, was more than happy to participate nicely and even got talkative. Its funny but I think he rather enjoyed the fact he was alone (figuratively speaking) It was really fun to watch him play, who knew? We are starting a new round of pregnancies in church. Its like a tide, or wave, or cycle. Something like that. My decaffeinated friend is due in April or may with a little girl. I have had the pleasure of babysitting her son a few times a month. He is such a doll, not to mention really really quiet. It has given me renewed motivation to keep the floor clean ;) I'm excited for this summer because city girl and I are going to go hiking more as well as camping. The kids are all old enough to handle longer hikes as well as outdoors stuff. When my girl was a newborn Greg and I took her up the icicle river and went rock climbing. no no no the baby wasn't on my back. After we moved to Oregon climbing was out, life got busy and *poof* 6 year later I think its time to start again.

new hair cut

Well here it is in all its glory. I'm glad to see some of the perm fried ends gone. :)

Schooling bla bla bla

Finally, I have reached the point of consistently teaching my younger two boys in the morning before my daughter starts her school day. My youngest boy has learned to focus for 10 minutes while we work on simple stuff. Cutting, pasting, and coloring. I cant tell you how proud I am of him! My middle child was born genetically wired for school. He sits quietly, recites, memorises and finishes with very little struggle. He is also my one child who does not suffer a learning challange. God knew I needed a confidence boost before teaching my youngest to read and write. This school year is 1/3 of the way through and I am happy with it. My K-12 has has a few studies in History that are way off, but thanks to the fact I am schooling at home we work around it. Truth be told I am glad of it, it challenges me to think! Next year Thomas will be old enough for Kindergarten. What to do, what to do. K-12 puts out a great kindergarten program, but I'm not sure I want to do the same thing with him. My life is a little more than hectic right now, do I want to do something different? do I want to send him to school? *sigh* It seems like the 'what to do' stress of school hit me much sooner with my first. I fretted a whole 2 years before I chose. Even then when I did pick k-12 I didn't know anyone who had done it before. This summer I think I will attend the giant home school convention in P town. A friend of mine suggested a year or two ago and I have been intrigued ever since. I will keep praying about it and surfing the net.

strung out

I'm writing this blog to you while horking down a large cookie with bright pink (high fructose corn syrup filled) frosting. mmm..that's better I'm already feeling a bit more sane..*child screaming from other room* nope the sanity is gone...I think I will have another. Last night my geriatric Great Dane got up to go to the bathroom. 4 TIMES! This is where the majority of my sleep loss is coming from these days. The third time she woke me up I forced her to go back to bed. The fourth time I had that crazy/haven't slept long enough/ want to give her the needle feeling. It was all I could do to guide her back and make her lay down. After this point I decided if she pooped on the floor I just wouldn't care. Now don't get me wrong, I love animals. I especially love Nancy. She has made me feel secure about being alone for many years. I just don't love taking care of animals when they are more needy than my own children.
So...sorry if I sound cranky from lack of sleep, its from the dog.

oh hello little lonely cookie left in the box, do you miss your friends? let me help you reunite with them!