My little girl is not so little

Today is Savannah's real Birthday, she was born 6 years ago today at at 10:40 am. That day was a very emotional day for me. I remember it was my hardest labor. We were so worried how having a second child would impact us. Now its hard to believe that she is now 6 and a first grader and we have 4 kids now. She is such a great big sister to her little brothers. We are so proud of the little lady she is becoming.

We surprised her today by filling her room with balloons in her favorite colors. She picked out powdered donuts to share with her friends at school today. She said they all loved her choice of treats. Now we are waiting for Grandma to pick her up and take her out for ice cream. We plan to have cake next weekend when Aunt Liss is in town. Liss, Grandpa Irwin and Savannah all have August Birthdays so it will be a Birthday celebration for the three of them.

The Caillou Debate

You either love him or you hate him. This show used to be banned in our house. When the girls were little I didn't let them watch it at all because of the "whiny"voice that Caillou uses. However, one day the show came on when Thomas was watching TV and he sat down, and became engrossed in it. He started asking lots of questions about things on the show. He is learning lots from the show because I think things that happen in the show are things that relate to every day life. Luckily, Thomas has not picked up the whiny voice from Caillou. This has been the show that Thomas relates to the most, and he has almost doubled his vocabulary since he began watching it. I don't credit it all to Caillou but, it definitely has influenced Thomas a lot. He is learning about different feelings and emotions and how to express himself. We always end up having discussions about something that happened in the show. This show teaches Thomas how to be a big brother and about sharing with others. So, for now Caillou is allowed in our house because its having a positive impact.

When Life is Frustrating

Second grade project due Friday, parents involvement expected...
No cardstock paper at home,have to run to the store...
Running to the store with 4 kids, not an easy task...
pack the diaper bag, change diapers, find everyones shoes...
Decide against going to Walmart at this time of night, stop off at CVS...
One kid kicks of his shoes immediately upon entering store...
One kids starts asking for Candy...
"No! No! Stop it!" words coming from Mom's mouth...
Grab paper, Grab dog food, Rats they have no bread...
Check out time. " No you can't have candy... Keep your shoes on...."
"What do you mean this register isn't working" Move to another one...
Out to the car, 4 kids in tow. Wasp flies in....
5 minutes pass, wasp went bye bye...
On the Road again.... hum the tune if you must.... Wait
"blutifpshkoehfehluleu" Thats the noise of baby having a blow out diaper...
Did I mention the store was only 5 minutes away and we only bought 3 things...
Pull into the garage, yeah we are home.

"Mom, NOW can I have candy.... "

Deep breath.... now to start cooking dinner, oh yeah and change that dreadful diaper.

Chuck E Cheese and the Gold Medal

Savannah will be turning 6 on Thursday. We celebrated her Birthday on Saturday at Chuck E Cheese. She had a smile from ear to ear the entire party. This is exactly what you want your child to look like on their Birthday. We left Thomas and Joseph with my parents so that we could concentrate on the party. There were a total of 11 girls and they all were really well behaved.

Savannah enjoyed having a picture moment with just Mommy and Daddy.
Here is Addy posing with some of the guests. Since Savannah is so close in age to Addy, she invited some second graders too. Addy and her play with the same friends a lot which is nice.
Here is Savannah with a couple other party guests.
Here is Savannah blowing out her candles. She chose not to take a picture with Chuck E, but thats fine.
She had a great time, and received lots of great gifts. With each present she opened, her smile got bigger and bigger. Earlier in the day Allen took her shopping to pick out a new bike. She found a 20inch High school musical bike, and a brand new helmet. I haven't taken pictures of her on it yet, so I will do that soon.

The Gold Medal
You can't see it very well in the above pictures, but Savannah has a gold medal around her neck that she received for being the Birthday Girl. Later that night, I went to bed with Thomas and Joseph, and Allen stayed up with the girls to watch the Olympics. I guess Savannah really was excited about the races, and told Allen that she wants to be in the Olympics someday so she can win more gold medals. (She thinks that the one she got at Chuck E Cheese is like the one they win in the Olympics.) They say that the ones that make it to the Olympics are the ones that dream of it at a young age. Maybe.... she definitely has that competitive gene in her.

Posing for Pictures

Trying to get 4 kids to pose for pictures, and have them all looking at the same time is almost nearly impossible. I attempted last night to take pictures of them all together and here are the results. They aren't too bad, I think I got a few good ones, in between the times that Thomas was running off in one direction or another or refusing to smile at me. Addy was complaining about the grass being too itchy. Savannah kept waving a little flag in front of her face... And Joseph, well you can't expect much cooperation at his age.

A funny story about the boys in the orange shirts. Joseph was dressed in an orange shirt yesterday after his morning nap. Thomas was wearing a red shirt, but then he went into his room and dug out his orange shirt, and brought it into me, so that he could be like "shoshif" which is Thomas talk for Joseph. It was very cute.
Savannah was the one who cooperated the best for pictures, and I think a few of them turned out pretty cute.
Addy always takes good pictures, but you can tell that she is a annoyed at the grass itching her legs.
This is the best shot of Thomas, and it was actually a group shot, that I cropped him out of, because he was the only one looking at me in that photo.

Toads, Turtles and Bunnies

Last night while I was at back to school night, Allen had the kids in the backyard playing. They were playing by the swingset and our dog Midnight was sniffing under the slide. The kids took a look and found a litter of bunnies. There were about 5 of them, cute as can be. No, we did not keep them. Allen drove the kids out to the Park and they found a safe spot for them. We told the kids they will be fine. We can only hope.
This is one of the many Toads my kids have caught over the summer. This one we didn't keep for more than a few days, but we had others that the kids kept for a week or so.
These are pictures of the box turtle that the kids had for a couple of weeks. They are trying to feed it lettuce in this picture.
Again, I have to say for us not going out of town all summer except to visit Allen's parents in August,the kids still seemed to find many things to entertain themselves. They love exploring and catching all kinds of critters and bugs. We have also had many worms, roly poly's, crickets and grasshoppers as pets this summer.

First Day of School

Today is the first day of school for us since yesterday the girls were sick. Thing's went pretty smoothly because Allen stayed home this morning to help, and we were all up by 645. It would be really nice if that could happen every day, but I think that is wishful thinking. The girls and I are on antibiotics. I feel better than I have all week and the girls seem to be doing great. So far the boys are still healthy.

We all walked to school together today. One of Addy's friends grabbed her as we were going into the school and Addy told me she wanted to go to class with her friend. I took Savannah to class, and she did great. No tears at all. I was so proud of her. I decided to go check on Addy, and she was pretty emotional when I got there, since she had gone to class alone. I went over and gave her a hug ,and helped her take out all of her school supplies and put them in her desk. She calmed down quickly once I was there with her. She was smiling when I left. As far as the rest of the day, Thomas, Joseph and I are going to hang out at the house, and I hope to get a nap in. I work over night tonight and tomorrow night. Next week, I will start going to the gym in the mornings.

Here are the pictures we took this morning...



Addy is going into Second grade this year.


Savannah is going into first grade this year.


Our First Family picture, since Joseph joined the family

All the kids together.

Our sick day at home

The girls have been playing Mancala for the past 2 hours. Motrin seems to be making them feel a little better.

Thomas, is wound up. Not feeling sick at all, and trying to get someone to be WILD with him.

Joseph, is happy as can be watching everyone around him. You will notice that I have not posted a picture of myself, due to the fact it would keep you from ever coming back to look at the blog again.

Under the Weather

It's another one of those mornings when I am up before 630am and have been up every couple of hours with Joseph. I have been sick since Monday, and have an awful cold with a sore throat. I didn't get into bed until 1130 last night because we took a trip to the Urgent Care.

The girls started getting sick on Tuesday, and yesterday continued to get worse and worse. Since we have been through this many, many times. I knew that all their symptoms were pointing to strep throat (Fever, Headache, sore throat, stomach ache) I ended up taking them into the Urgent Care where I work. Well, they were both positive. So, then we headed to a 24 hour pharmacy and picked up their Rx's, thus the reason I wasn't in bed until 1130.

My goal is to have them back at school tomorrow,for their second day of school. I am sad they are missing their first day, but it's only a 1/2 day anyway. This is not the way I had imagined the school year starting.

Today, we plan to take it easy and let the antibiotics do their work. I have a Rx to fill for myself if my throat doesn't start feeling better, and if Thomas gets sick I have one for him too. It helps having connections. :) Some days, I just wish I could crawl into bed and have someone take care of me. I like my life as a nurse and a Mom, but some days I want to be off duty!

EEEEEEEK we have Mice

So, I was doing laundry the other day and when I took the clothes out of the dryer everything smelled kind of funny, almost like burnt plastic. It happened again with 2 more loads. We just bought our washer and dryer from Sears in May and luckily we purchased the extended warranty. So, I called them to come out and look at our dryer. Well, today the guy was here. He took it apart and showed me along the sides on the bottom that there were little mouse droppings along with a trail of dog food. I said "please tell me that we have not fried a mouse in the dryer" he said, "No" but they have seen that before. Basically the mice are coming in and taking dog food from the dish which is located in the laundry room and then taking it back through the dryer, and that is what we are smelling! Yuck!!!! He vacuumed it all out and told me to run it a few times with dryer sheets in it. EWWWWWWWW!

A Look Back at the Summer

A Baby was Born..





We had a horse in our backyard for a weekend...



We ran through sprinklers, and went swimming...
We caught toads and turtles...

We played on the swingset, and buried eachother in the sand...

We took long naps together...
We played music and danced and sang songs...

We laughed, and laughed...

Thomas the Rock Star

Thomas will be turning 3 in just a few months. He has been working with Infant Toddler services since he turned 2, because of a speech delay. These past few days I am really seeing all of the therapy paying off. He has been talking, singing, and even reciting nursery rhymes. His new favorite games are pretending he is different animals, people, airplanes and trains etc. He also is counting, and noticing that every object is made out of different shapes. "Whats dis shape Mama" He is talking non stop, we still have some difficulty understanding him, but he has made great improvements. My little boy is growing up. I am so proud of him.

Exploring Castle Rock

To learn more about Castle Rock click the link below.

http://www.washburn.edu/cas/art/cyoho/archive/KStravel/bigrocks/castle.html




Here we are at the top of one of the "mountains" as Thomas liked to call them. We are all here except for little Joseph who stayed home with Grandma Bray.

Our kids love to explore so this was right up their alley. The kids had no trouble climbing at all. Even little Thomas never seemed to get tired.

We all had fun looking for fossils and exploring the small little caves. Each of the kids came back home with a bag full of treasures.

3 kids and a Naked Baby

What is it about naked babies. They are just the cutest thing in the world. Check out these cute shots of Joseph I took a couple days ago.