LifeSkillz

For the most recent session of LifeSkillz, we learned about finances. Not a lot, but enough for the kids to have a clue about what it takes to manage their money just a wee bit. The kids started off playing Monopoly. The girls seemed more into adhering to the rules and while David was more "creative" about where the bank or pot should go, based on his bad decisions.

Back to It

Life at My Mom's House

Looking back at the pictures from our vacation, it seems like it was years ago.  <Sigh!> I miss being able to sleep in while someone else dealt with my circus, my monkeys.

Life inside my mom's house centered around a new puppy. Someone dumped this cute little doggie and my sister's big dogs thought he was a toy for them. They worked night and day trying to extract his little squeaker!

Most Wonderful Time of the Year

We can exhale now. All of the children have been escorted back to their respective schools.

Kindergarten and First Grade

Too Cool for Outside Pic

So I Got One Anyway

Seems like just yesterday when they were so sweet and posing for their mama...



We are so excited for them (and for us) starting this new chapter in their lives.

Day Tripping

We didn't have any big plans for Spring Break this year as we've been busy with soccer, basketball, track and everything else our children are into these days. But we did squeeze in a day trip to a very cool aquarium.

Cool pool with lots of little "Nemo" fish and 2 bright purple fish.

Under the Sea

I feel the same way sometimes after a big meal!

Now I know what my goldfish and tadpoles see when they look up...

This little guy was getting a little fresh with Aubri.

We saw the cool shark tank and at times it was almost like we were in the water with them. Except for the loud kid noises which surely would have caused the sharks to swarm.

Create a Pause

My main goals this year involve incorporating words like "calm", "zen", "quality" "bliss" and "me" into my life as often as possible. To that end I have restarted reading Scream Free Parenting by Hal Edward Runkel. I can't recall exactly when I started reading the book or why I set it down (to yell at the kids?).

Last night I was looking through the bookcases to count how many different Bibles we have when this book popped out at me. (hmmmmm) We have at least 7 different Bibles in our home, FYI.

The holidays have been particularly draining for us this year with so much extra going on in such a concentrated amount of time and I have been feeling at my wit's end frequently with the kids.

They have made gatherings and outings a challenge to enjoy and no amount of threats through gritted teeth have helped deter the rotten behavior. For a while I was thinking that I might just need to invest in an aspergillum.

I know my getting onto my kids in front of others makes others uncomfortable, but I cannot just ignore behavior (and I don't think I should). My problem is that I lose my cool when the inevitable Bad Behavior starts and that apparently fuels the fire with the children. (Here's my Emotional Remote Control! Have at it!)

SFP has been a good read so far and is helping me to have some hope again. We have agreed all along about not having a world centered around kids and we know that kids these days are plagued with entitlement issues and we do not agree that you should get a trophy for showing up. We want our kids to be independent, self-directed adults but we have fallen into a few traps. I read something tonight that hit home:

"The ‎entire family's emotional life is now tied to the whims, frailties, and growing pains of the least mature members of the family." (excerpt from SFP)

WHOA! What a concept... definitely shifting things around here....

Anyway, yesterday I was picking up some fleece rain boot liners in preparation of the ugly weather headed this way and on the way out of the store, this little makeup bag caught my eye. I think God was speaking to me again and knows I need to constantly have reminders in my face (and purse).

I hear Ya and I am trying to be still and listen a little more often...

Babies, It's COLD Outside!

And that is why mama's INSIDE!

Our lonely little chicken is keeping warm inside....

Our furry kid's playing in the snow too!

A little more composed...she hardly disturbed the snow..

Advent - Day 1

This was sort of a cheat for us as we just had them open up their Advent calendars that their great grandparents sent them...

First and Last

Today my kiddos are finishing up another year of school and I am so proud of them.

This is Emi and David on the first day of school.



And this is them on the last day (today!).

They have grown so much! (Emi may make her goal of getting to 6'5" yet!)

Looking forward to the lazy days of summer...

Heart Boiled Love

Ok, so maybe not love but EGGS!

I saw this idea posted in my FaceBook feed from a friend's pin on Pinterest. Is that considered 2nd or 3rd hand knowledge? 

You take freshly boiled eggs, peel them while warm and press chop sticks on them until cool. When you slice the eggs, they are heart shaped...

Well, they were heart-shaped when I went to bed last night anyway. They were a little flat on the bottom when the kids ate them for breakfast.

I think the point was that mom made breakfast with love...

Who Needs Pie?

When you've got fritters?

Today we spent most of the day in Ripley, OK - believe it or not.  Heh! Emi had a basketball tournament there.

I don't get to watch most of the games....can you guess why?



Sure, they are cute with their curly hair and brown eyes, but sometimes I'd like to watch Big Sis for just a moment.

After we got home and I loved on my sweet little Gracie for a bit, I got busy with a Mexican themed dinner  -  chicken taquitos from the store, white beans with rotel and cilantro and home made guacamole.  I used the jalapeno I found in the garden along with a few home grown grape tomatoes and it was yummy. Even David ate some and he claims he does not like avocado.

So after last week when I fell in love with lemon sage fritters, I got the urge to make apple fritters for the family. I googled for a recipe and of course, Pioneer Woman had a recipe and so I had to try hers. Ree has never steered me wrong. We deviated from the recipe right off the bat with the omission of the 3 tbsp sugar (listed under the 1/2 C of sugar (?)) and also, we used Sunrise Apples instead of Granny Smith because that's what we had on hand.



Oh, and instead of glazing the finished fritters or dusting them heavily with powdered sugar, we used a drizzle of caramel. Oh my!



I sure had some happy campers in the house tonight!

Epic Fail(s)

Recently we've had a couple of incidents that I'd like to share with you in charge of little ones (yours or others) so you don't make the same mistakes.

If you know me or our kids or have read this blog for any length of time, you know that David is a very spirited young man. He's very VERY. (You read that right.) We know he can't handle sugar like his sisters can, and that he is naturally wound up and ready to go. While that can be good, most of the time it gets him into trouble. So, we had a theory that maybe David was one of those special ones who becomes very calm with the introduction of caffeine into the system. I had discussed this with a friend of mine who suggested we try Mountain Dew because her son would not drink coffee. We thought, "What the hay?" and before Aubri's birthday party on Sunday we gave David a shot of MD. He rather enjoyed that.

We let him know it was a special experiment and not to tell his sisters (that was a fail too) because he knows he's got more energy than all of us put together already. So, anyway, he lost his marbles at least 3x times during the party and was totally inconsolable at the beginning of the party. I can't recall what it was that didn't go his way, but he was in his chair in the fetal position crying about it while his cousins tried to console him. It was ugly and I had compassion because it's the first time I've ever witnessed someone of the opposite sex experience full on PMS. Poor guy!

And Monday at school he was "difficult" after having a bowl of sugary cereal for breakfast.  Now, we know about diet and behavior and ADD. My family consisted of 5 kids very close in age and we were put on the Feingold Diet instead of meds in order for us all to have a chance at survival. (We were also put on cod liver oil instead of health insurance but that's a story for another day.) I still don't know how my parents got through it all but I'm sure there was some collateral damage. But we are busy parents and sometimes a bowl of cereal is better than nothing, right? We are not entirely convinced that David has a syndrome/disorder because he CAN be good after having sweets...

After the fail with Mountain Dew (seriously, what did we expect?) we decided to try coffee.  A quick shot of coffee (with milk and a tiny bit of sugar) before class to calm the nerves. This morning Scott administered the caffeine to the boy and he had a record - nay - banner day at school today. He was very good at transitioning and when things didn't go his way, he said "Ok" and went about his business. (!)

We are amazed and happy with the outcome of the 2nd experiment. I think we'll try coffee with Vanilla Coconut milk and or xylitol to get rid of the sugar altogether. We're not suggesting the boy never get sugar, but if you happen to be the one pushing the sugar (I'm looking at you, Grandma Babe!) then you will need to sit with him until he comes down from his bad trip!

The 2nd epic fail involved the baby. The night of her birthday party, about 6 hours after David lost his ever-loving "Do the Dew" mind, she claimed her tummy hurt. I had her try to poop to see if that helped and then put her to bed. Just prior, I had put her mattress pad protector on David's bed to protect his mattress (obvs) and proclaimed loudly that Aubri is a champion of her bladder, like a camel and she "never had accidents" and so her mattress was left unprotected. We watched a couple of episodes of The Walking Dead and then I checked on Aubri to make sure she wasn't choking on vomit (the things that go through a mom's mind) and she was sleeping like a baby around 11pm. 

At 1:20 am Aubri knocked on our door and then came in asking Daddy to wipe her. I thought she asked him to wipe the blood off of her (stupid zombie shows). He got up to help her in the bathroom and soon realized the horror of the situation. She had obviously suffered from the Human Brew and soiled her bed in the worst way possible. She had to be hosed down and I found it difficult to snuggle with her afterwards knowing what unholiness had occurred. We actually put her in a PullUp leftover from long ago.

The bed was a total loss. There is no way to clean up that much excrement when it's soaked in. We dropped the mattress, sheets and a couple of rugs that had likely absorbed a fair amount of pee/poop over the last year - at the dump. Oh, so funny now that I've typed it out.

We had needed to get Aubri a full sized mattress as the bottom bed where she sleeps in the bunk bed configuration is a full sized frame and she's had a twin bed. It was on the list to get and it moved way up in priority Monday morning.

We traced back the probable cause to the green onions that were in her mid-afternoon bowl of Baked Potato Soup. Big sister failed (she had her part in this too) to rinse the onions before chopping them and garnishing her little sister's bowl. Aubri had serious onion breath after that snack and still, the next morning as she snuggled up with me.

So, to recap:

• rinse off your veggies/onions (especially if you are eating them raw)
• no Mountain Dew for kids, anywhere, ever...(but it's ok for mom and dads)
• always use a pad
• never say "never"

Just Enough

What a nice long weekend we had! Friday it was nice to have breakfast with my family on a weekday for the first time in a long time. Much of the rest of the day was spent cleaning and clearing and purging (and not showering).  I kept thinking that I would get busy reading Catching Fire and napping, but I kept getting distracted by chores. (and baking banana nut bread and cooking a pot of Baked Potato soup for dinner)

In fact, around 9pm when everyone in the house was asleep (yes, on a Friday night!), I got busy scrubbing the oven... I would post pictures because I am amazed at how well my generic dollar store magic eraser got rid of the years of gunk, but I am not quite done. I also spent some time culling outgrown clothes from the Little Ones' dresser and reorging the pantry. There's still more for me to sort and organize and purge but I got a good start.

Saturday morning was a cold one on the soccer field. Emi had a game mid-morning and David's game started 30 minutes into hers...on the other side of the complex.  It was so cold that even with jackets and a blanket, Aubri and I retreated to the Disco for the last few minutes of the game to thaw out.

We didn't have any real plans after soccer, Scott watched the game and after all of the kids were bathed, we watched The Princess and the Frog and I worked on trying to cornrow Emi's hair. I am not good at cornrows but I will say that detangling her hair after taking out all of the twists we put in a couple of weeks ago was a lot easier. I have to thank Ketiesha for getting Emi's hair under control. Immediately after I got my amateur cornrows in (with afropuffs on the ends), I was thinking how much I would love to do the microbraids or even twists again.

I had a pork roast cooking all day in the crock pot and we made pumpkin coconut yeast rolls to go with. It's been a yummy weekend! It's also been a very productive weekend peppered with family time and kiddo activities.

Sunday after church we had lunch at my parent's and then we beelined up to the mall to hear Emi's chorus sing 5 songs. Afterwards we decided to hit El Chico for an early, early dinner. Actually it was just tapas till we popped and a couple of long overdue margarootskis....





Today was another very productive day in which I found myself trapped in my 10 year old hoarder's room. I had to fill a couple of bags for the trash bin and a couple more to donate. And I organized more board games than we had growing up in a house full of 5 kids (!) and culled a couple of boxes of books from her library to move down to the Little Ones' room. Emi was kind enough to donate some musical toys to the kids. I guestimate that I was up in her room for 3 hours! Too bad I didn't use some of that time to get my room into shape.

I moved things around from room to room (except for the trash) and felt a little like I was playing Tetris making things fit just right.

I am feeling very blessed right now - we always seem to have just enough. (God gives us what we need when we need it.)

I hope that you too have had a wonderful, refreshing weekend and that you are blessed with just enough in your life too!

That Family

Today we jumped off a cliff and became "that family". That family that has to be in multiple places at the same time because of kiddo activities. We've coasted by for the past couple of years as Emi's extra-curriculars changed up because the Little Ones were too young for team sports. Now our worlds have been rocked because the energy-packed David finally has his own soccer team!

Soccer or Kick Boxing? Who cares? As long as these boys have some sort of outlet, right?

I'm so happy for the little guy too because he has needed his own thing. He is smart and coordinated and strong and energetic; and those characteristics need to be channeled into something good (vice hanging out on the Devil's Playground). I asked his coach to run him ragged and I think he succeeded because during dinner last night, David told Daddy that was was tired. What? I have NEVER (in 2.5 years) heard that boy admit that he's tired.

So this week officially begins the roller coaster ride of getting each kid to their corresponding activity/event/game/party/practice. Can you imagine how CRAZY it will be next year when Aubri starts up with soccer and Emi is in middle school? I'm trying not to panic about it too much in advance.

Emi's on 2 sports teams and in chorus (of course!) and she also wants to be in Science Club and Robotics Club. Luckily she can fit it all in but there may be days where things overlap. I am so proud of my little girl who has all of the confidence in the world. She is loving being a 5th grader and frequently talks about college. I am not sure I even knew what college WAS when I was in the 5th grade (although I spent a lot of time at OU computer labs playing with the card readers back then).

David is on the cusp of reading, if he could just focus. Aubri may be reading before him because she CAN focus. I can relate to David because my mind races too, but I enjoy the opportunity to plop down with a good book. He likes to ask us for made up words in the hopes that he might accidentally spell something sweet or fun.  Can I have an A-O-O-F? Nope, fresh out, buddy!

On a related note: in an effort to help the Little Ones learn more words we've posted lots of words in upper and lower case letters on every day objects. It's working!

Recognizing words... not so much their messes...

I guess with 2 in soccer now I can't escape becoming a "Soccer Mom" now, huh?

Promise of a New Day

After a particularly long week at work last week, I was ready for the weekend...and the elusive rain. Saturday we spent the first half of the day in the yard and alley clipping, raking and bagging up yard waste. I decided to get busy on rooting some English Ivy for the back drive because all of the exposed concrete wall is too tempting for the local graffiti artists and the clematis roots that I bought this past spring were duds. The English Ivy is readily available here so I'll go with that. Kids don't spray paint pretty green vines, do they?

I also got to spend some quality time in my garden and I'm disappointed that I let it go so much this summer. Earlier this summer we harvested the single kabocha squash that I'd grown (before it died on the vine) and Emi cooked it up in a sort of hash that I didn't get to taste. ;.( One of my Casper pumpkins perished because of the heat or possibly because it was choked out by some mystery melon species that I wish I'd cleared out months ago when I found it growing in the compost pile. I am not 100% sure, but I think it's an invasive wild melon.  The other one is sitting on the counter in the kitchen possibly maturing, not sure at this point. It definitely doesn't look like Casper though. It's a brownish green.

My organic watermelon vine grew 2 melons that were taken over by insects before they could get too big. ;.( Actually one is still out there possibly surviving, possibly not.

Last October I brought these home from the office breakroom ..

Mystery Melon - do YOU know what they are?

We didn't eat them because we were never sure what they were - ever the composter though, I tossed them into the compost pile.

And this is what I found in the garden last week.




Something had already started gnawing on it so I threw it away, but then I really inspected what was left in the garden and it looks like I have at least 9 more of these babies growing on a vine that had taken over my garden. We cut one open yesterday to see what was inside and it smells like cucumber and it looked like it was oozing.




I should have been suspicious when this vine was growing so well. Only weeds grow this well, right?

I am still hoping to get a bumper crop of tomatoes as the weather cools down and maybe I might be able to salvage that single watermelon out there....

And I'm sad to say that those pesky orange caterpillars devastated my passion flower again this year. I hope the vine will be able to come back next year, but a couple of years ago when they invaded, my vine never recovered... ;.(

But we got rain (glorious rain!) last night and between that and the rains from last week, things are looking up around here (except for my fragrant Craepe Myrtle which was looking down after being soaked with rain)...



I am looking forward to a new day and a new week...last week was brutal...

On the way home from MeeMaw's and PeePaw's

Here's to the promise of a new day for us all this week.

Hope you all have a fantabulous week, friends!

First Day of School

It seems like only yesterday that we were telling David he'd be going to school with Big Sister Emi next year...

Emi's First Day of 4th Grade (August 2011)

But that day is here. Today the whole family escorted David and Emi to their first day of school.

Emi 5th Grade, David Pre-K

Emi was embarassed that we were escorting her to her class and taking pictures (get used to it baby girl!) and David was so excited about making new friends...he wasn't embarassed by us being there. I feel sorry for his teachers because the class is 75% boys...luckily there are 2 teachers to keep things under control.

Happy for Big Brother

And Aubri was so excited for her brother before we dropped him off, but so sad on the way home... until Daddy took her to see any old friend at her old school... she brightened a bit after that. She sure does miss her brother when he's gone...

Next Year, Baby Girl...

Weekending

Friday was the first day of the city-wide garage sale in which we decided to participate. We had random items in the yard and in the basement and garage that needed to go and normally we'd take this stuff straight to the Salvation Army. But the kids (at the behest of the oldest sibling) had been bugging (begging) us for a new pet. Specifically a pet rat. We are not quite sold on the idea, especially since I saw a special on rat infestations and how quickly and boldly they can take over... but we are still entertaining the idea of getting a fancy rat.

But we aren't going to pay for said rat, so we decided to let the kids earn some money to start a new Pet Fund.

So this past week Scott cleaned out the garage and we had items sorted to toss, keep or sell. Thursday night we lugged stuff up from the basement and started pricing.

Friday morning after the sun came up we set up shop and unloaded a lot of items we no longer needed (i.e. a dolly, some bikes, an air compressor)...

 

David did his part in helping out by greeting the customers and letting them know who's bike that was ("That's my sister's bike!") and then talking about the customers as they walked away ("Why didn't they buy anything?!") Despite his valiant efforts, stuff got sold!

By lunchtime, we thought were done, but after we put the kids down for their nap we powered through...for another hour.  Then we decided to load up the truck and cart the remaining items to Salvation Army a day early. That second day might have yielded a little more cash, but it was so freeing to be rid of the extra stuff, have some cash on hand AND have Saturday free to TCB.

I'm sure Spidey has found a good home...

Saturday morning started off really nice, chilly and overcast. After breakfast, we loaded up the kids and headed out for back to school clothes shopping. Our first stop was Kohl's. As we were making our way to Kohl's, the skies opened up and dropped buckets and buckets of rain. We were soaked as we made our way into the store and then the electricity went out. The looting began almost immediately!

Just kidding! The power flickered for a few moments and then we got to the serious business of getting the kids some much needed socks, shoes, under clothes, etc.

Two hours later....it was still raining and we were finally headed home.



Later in the afternoon, we girls decided to get out and find me a cheap hair cut. I have a go-to girl that I am happy with, but I didn't want to futz with an appointment and I really just wanted a trim, so to Top Cuts is where we went. I was in and out within 15 minutes!

After that we braved Walmart for groceries and school supplies. David starts Pre-K and this will be the only time that he's in school with big sister Emi. What a year this will be! He is also going to play soccer like big sis. I don't know how we'll squeeze in all of the extra-curricular activities, but I guess we will. Looking forward to what this year brings us!

Awwwww...

Sunday was a relaxing day after church. I even managed to get a 30 minute nap in.

Today I am longing for Sunday afternoon. I have been way busy at work this week and this morning at 3:21, I woke from a sound sleep thinking I heard a gunshot coming from campus. I can't be sure I wasn't dreaming...I hope I was.

Hope the week has been kind to you, friends!

Here's to Back to School!