Eleven Years

You wore the white tux, and my little black dress fit like a glove. I wonder what we would have thought if we could have peered past the Senior prom into our future. I think we would have been dumbfounded.

Two kids in love, beating the odds. Happy Anniversary Nate.

End of the year Meme

I saw this over at Dolly Mama's and I thought it was a good idea, figured it would a be a catalyst for reflection over the past year. Heck, I don't even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, so this could be very interesting.... I mean very boring.

1. What did you do in 2005 that you had never done before?
Saw a real live ballet. It was impressive, and boring at the same time.

2.Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't really remember making any last year. hmmmm, probably won't make any this year either. Gosh, I'm goal-oriented huh?!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Ummm, me? Gemma was born June 8th.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
Stayed the good old USA.

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?
More patience and optimism.

7. What dates will remain etched in your memory and why?
June 8th, Gemma's birth, and why? Because mother's are supposed to remember their children's birthdays.

8. What's your biggest achievement of the year?
I'm pretty proud that I re-learned how to drive a stick shift, and I'm getting almost good at it. It's only every once in awhile that I get cruising along and then suddenly remember...ACK! I"m driving a stick! Shift Heth, shift!

9. What was your biggest failure?
Pass? I don't know. This is hard.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Me-just the occasional sinus infection. There was that stomach flu that whipped through here, Caedmon and I shared the toilet one night. The poor kid will be traumatized forever from the synchronized vomiting with his mother. Oh, and Noelle had stitches in her chin after a mishap at the swimming pool.

11.What was the best thing you bought?
Without a doubt, the Beast. Our twelve passenger van with all captain chairs. You just can't beat the "Welcome Enjoy Your Stay" sign/light from it's previous life as an airport shuttle.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Both Tyler and Noelle were baptized this summer. I believe there was definitely a celebration in heaven that day. We were so proud of them making the decision to make public their love for Jesus.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and disgusted?
I don't know

14. Where did most of your money go?
Good question. Have you seen it?

15. What did you get really really excited about?
The Blindside Show

16. What song will always remind you of 2005?
"Put Back the Stars"

17. Compared to this time last year are you?
a)happier or sadder? happier
b)fatter or thinner? thinner, I was PREGNANT this time last year!
c)richer or poorer? richer

18. What do you wish you had done more of?
More smiling and laughing and hugging.

19. What do you wish you had done less of?
Less scowling and worrying, and criticizing.

20. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
Playing games and eating with my husband and kids.

21. Did you fall in love in 2005?
Yes, with our newest daughter, and I stayed in love with Nate

22. What was your favorite TV program?
The Biggest Loser

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I don' think so

24. What was the best book you read?
The three books "Black", "Red", and "White" by Ted Dekker

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I discovered that I don't hate techno ALL the time, I like it for running, but otherwise it's ANNOYING.

26. What did you want and get?
I wanted a really big washer and dryer and the laundry fairies heard me

27. What did you not want and not get?
I didn't want to mess with potty training Jack yet, and either did he

28. What was your favorite film this year?
Star Wars Episode 3, I know, I'm a loser.

29. What did you do on your birthday and how old were you?
We ate. I was 28.

30. What one thing would have made your year measurably more satisfying?
ORGANIZATION

31. How would you describe your personal fashion in 2005?
Transitional

32. What kept you sane?
Nate

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I don't think I fancied any one famous

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
none

35. Who did you miss?
My Grandma

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Gemma

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005.
"Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."-- Thomas a Kempis

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
"We're gonna rock (the baby) around the clock tonight."


So that's it, my 2005 in a nutshell.
I'm tagging everyone who is reading this, join in if you want to.

Keyboards

Well, I just spent the last hour and a half cleaning up the coffee from the depths of my keyboard. Quick question and no counting. Just off the top of your head how many keys do you think are on your keyboard? I know it varies, but I know how many are on mine. I know because I manually scrubbed every single one of them with diaper wipes. I stink'n love diaper wipes, I use them for everything and I will be buying them when my kids are in college. I also used about 40 q-tips to clean in and around under all the keys. Yuck, it was pretty disgusting in there. Seriously.

But all to no avail. I plugged the newly cleaned, shiny keyboard back in, and it just beeped at me. So now I am using a back up that my computer-geek husband had stored away in his techno-bin. I don't like it already, the "home" key is right by the backspace, that gets a little annoying. But it does glow a pretty blue, so that's cool.

104. My old keyboard had 104 keys. This new one has 105 and 19 little buttons, I'm not sure what they do.......

Snowmen

Here is some fun from a few weeks ago. Mariah (my younger sister), Noelle, Camryn, and Caedmon had a great time playing in the new snow. After all this warmer weather we are having, the snow is suffering. The fort lost it's roof, and three of the four snowmen are dead. One is still standing but he looks a little emaciated.

Guesas who just spilled coffe on her keybosard? Suck.

Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jog.

*waving and grinning*

I'm back!

Whew! What a crazy couple of days this has been. I'm excited to announce that this is our first full day at home. We have stopped in just long enough to drop off loot before we ran to the next thing. The living room looks like a hurricane blew through, I have no idea where I am going to put all this stuff. It's dangerous for poor little Gemma, who is mastering the art of crawling this week. She is also popping out two new teeth. I forget how much that changes their little smile.

All in all, Christmas was a success. We had our moments of stress and un-merriness, a few squabbles and bickering. Keeping a schedule like this one is exhausting on the parents AND the kids. We SO enjoy time with the family, but it is good to be home and to start thinking about how to get this place whipped back into shape.

Some favorite things this week:

• The annual wrapping paper war at my grandparent where all the adults and kids engage in pummeling each other with wads of Santa and snow flake covered bombs.
• My Dad's yearly Christmas letter to all of his kids. He reads it to us on Christmas morning and there are usually tears flowing all around the room
• Homemade caramels. Waaaaaaah, I miss them already.
• New little baby girl clothes, specifically, a little red and white poncho for Gemma
• Shopping yesterday with my sister-in-law Anna. We had a ton of fun and got lots of great deals.
• Opening the gifts our kids bought and wrapped for us. Just precious, and also hilarious.
• Hearing about Tyler and Noelle going off the big jump while snowboarding with my brothers.
• Watching four little boy cousins all dress up like ninja clones.
• Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix.
• Running at the gym to Spongebob music. I borrowed Tyler's new MP3 player which was loaded with yellow sponge happiness. At one point I literally laughed out loud, I wonder what the other exercisers thought.

I hope you all had a GREAT week, it's great to be back.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Laundry Crew.

Christmas is a coming, a coming, a coming.

It's the countdown to the big three day event. We have quite the Christmas schedule, let me tell you about it.

Christmas eve morning-Opening gifts at our house with our kids

Christmas eve noon-Opening gifts with Nate's parents and sister and family

Christmas eve evening-Christmas with Nate's grandma and family

Sleep over at my parents

Very, Very Early Christmas morning-Opening gifts with my parents and siblings

QUICK, back to our house to get everyone to church by 9:30ish. Are we insane? Yes, we are.

Christmas afternoon- To my grandparents' with my Mom's side of the family

Sleep over at my parents again.

Day after Christmas morning-Big traditional brunch with my parents that we couldn't fit in before church.

Day after Christmas afternoon-Opening gifts at Nate's parents again but with his other grandma who we all call "Matoo".

Whew. But I love it and I wouldn't change a thing.

There was also one other even that got postponed because of weather, we will probably visit my Grandpa with my Dad's side of the family in January sometime.

Ok, so two days to go and I have so much left to do. And like all of you I am fighting the internal battle not to just scream. Or maybe you have all had your presents wrapped for weeks now and you are sitting around drinking egg nog while listening to Christmas music. I may murder you. I'm trying to savor these special moments with my kids instead of wringing their necks for pulling the cushions off the couch for the millionth time. I'm trying to remember what it is like from their perspective, the excitement of the first day of break, the anticipation of all the goodies and all the gifts. Actually I'm not having THAT hard of a time identifying with their excitement over the goodies.

So today, I am burying all my frustration over the state of the house, and I am diving head first into the list of Christmas things left to do. Christmas will come if my house is messy or clean. I'm trying to do it all with a grin pasted on my face. I really do feel joyful today, seriously. Must be the fact that "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer" has been looping through my brain all morning. Now if I only had a week left instead of two days.

Christmas Shopping With Jack

I should know better than to try to take a two year old Christmas shopping. Especially Jack. Jack, I am writing this specifically so that some day when you are old and mature, you will know exactly how you acted in stores when you were two.

Picture this. A mother with a baby strapped to the front of her, pushing a crazy train-of-a-cart at Target. You know the carts, they are about three feet longer than a regular cart because of the fun little seats for the kiddies to sit in. In the little fun seats of this cart are a four year old who is surprisingly acting like an angel, and his two year old counterpart. I fully expected little red horns to pop out of his head. Did I just say that out loud?

Jack was strapped into the cart but had managed to get his shoulders free. The straps around his legs were still holding firm so he was arching his back over the edge of the cart and screaming. Seriously. The kind of cry/scream where their little voices get a all hoarse and begin to warble. Bless his little heart. I don't know what started it but it lasted a full ten minutes, it seemed like an hour. And all the other customers were so painfully aware that we were in the store.

Please blogging friends, share your shopping horror stories with me. Let me know that it's not my children alone who have meltdowns in the aisles. Because I have plenty of horror stories of my own, one of them being just yesterday when I took all six kids to our tiny little local grocery store at 5 o clock in the evening. Yes, I am insane. That trip involved an escapee in the parking lot and a shoplifting incident There's nothing like making the infamous trip BACK into the store to turn in the loot. Ahhhh the humility of motherhood.

Buzzed

I put everything up. The top third of our house is full of all of the things I don't want the kids to have. Not that it helps. Permanent markers, crayons, matches, toothpaste, nail polish and all other possible offenders are banished to live on top of the fridge, up in the top shelf of a cupboard, or on top of the bookshelf. Somehow, I managed to overlook the obvious.

Scissors.

Here we have Caedmon sporting his new do-it-yourself haircut.

Lovely huh?
So I did what all self-respecting mothers would do in a situation like this. I called Grandma, and she came running with clippers in hand.



When I explained to Mr. Four year old what would have to be done, he cried "I don't want to be almost bald!" But desperate times call for desperate measures.

And I think almost bald looks kind of cute.

Chocolate anyone?

Last night we had a rare weekend evening with nothing going on. We snatched the opportunity to watch some movies as a family. I was the lucky movie-picker-outer who got to tackle the task of trying to find something that would please the tribe. I knew they had already seen it at school, but I chose the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I wasn't particularly thrilled about it, I didn't really enjoy the original, but I was willing to give it a shot. I know, I know, hang me by my toenails for not liking the old retro classic.

I was pleasantly surprised. There are three things I would like to point out about this movie and I would like to start with number two if you don't mind.

#2. At first, Willy (Johnny Depp) reminded me of Michael Jackson, but after while, I got over it.

#1. The Oompa Loompa's cracked me up, I hated them in the original, in this one they were hilarious.

#3. We suddenly became really, really hungry for chocolate.

And so as soon as we hit eject, Nate stealthily slipped on his jacket and made his exit out the back door, leaving me with specific directions to have the kids in bed by the time he returned. Aren't we just the picture perfect examples of parental sacrifice and generosity? "Quick, put the kids to bed so we can eat large chocolate bars without having to share." Actually, I did sneak a couple squares up to the ones who were still awake. Then I turned in, hoping to dream of rivers of Chocolate. Nate on the other hand, stayed up late to watch War of the Worlds. Yuck. There is nothing about aliens harvesting humans that is even remotely appealing to me. Bleh. I'll stick to movies about candy.

Oh come on, you know you love these.....

As Susan, you are mature and respectable, yet with your 'motherly' role you can be quite bossy. Still, you can always be trusted to be loyal and faithful.

Laundry Status 12/15

I have been running a laundry marathon for a few days and as a result we all have full laundry baskets and clean sheets on our beds. I even washed a bunch of blankets, you would be impressed internet. The wet snow clothes are throwing me off a bit. The kids come in after playing in the snow and we have to throw large amounts of soggy apparel in the dryer. Which means that the clothes IN the dryer need to come out and they usually end up on the floor. Oh well, at least we have cute snowmen in our front yard, and at least THEY aren't creating any laundry for me to wash. They stay far far away from the dryer.

Home Improvement

When we bought this house six years ago there were a few things we wanted to change, mainly the siding.

Before. A lovely two tone.

During. Nate (that's him on the orange ladder) took on the project himself.

After. Didn't he do a wonderful job?

The outside of the house was his to take care of, the inside was mine. Some of the challenges I faced were a headache-inducing floral wallpaper in the kitchen, a Packers theme in one of the kids' bedrooms complete with green striped mini blinds, and a hunter green dungeon of a master bedroom. One of my tricks of the trade is to wait until Nate goes out of town on business before I make big changes in the house. Kind of a "While You Were Out" type thing. It got to the point that he would call from his hotel room and ask what room I was painting this time.

One of my favorite rooms is the boys' bedroom. You saw it earlier when I revealed the triple decker bunk. Here is a close up of the ants that climb the walls of their room.

I have pretty much repainted every single room in the house. The kitchen is yellow, the living room is a pale green. I painted some blues over deep maroon wallpaper in the family room, THAT was interesting. The girls' room is on it's second theme from a blinding yellow to a more- comfortable-to-look-at pink. And as a reminder that girls are made of "Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice" I painted those words across their wall. The bathroom is a turquoise with some more little reminders to "Wipe", "Flush", and "Wash". Lastly, our room which I brushed from a horrific cave to a very lovely pale purple.

And it is that room that I tackled today. It has been purple since, hmmmmm, let me think. I believe I was pregnant with Caedmon when I did that room. Or maybe it was Jack, I don't remember. Slowly, over time that room had become the place that we just dumped all of our junk on the way to the storage room. Too lazy to open one more door, we just dropped it there. Today I took it on with my Swiffer a-swing'n. There weren't just plain old dust bunnies in there, those things were mutants. I did a bit of rearranging too, and while I was at it, I tackled something a little more advanced. I hung a curtain rod.

Suddenly While You Were Out turned into Surprised By Design. Except it was more of like "Surprised By Holes in the Wall". Yes, I'll admit it. I'm a measure once cut twice kind of girl. I have been known to hang pictures on the wall by just "eyeballin it", and sometimes it takes me a few tries to get it just right. I seem to have pulled off the curtain rod ok though, no one was injured. I did have to use a power tool and there were excessive amounts measuring involved, but I did it and boy am I proud. I think Nate was a little bit impressed too.

Re-takes tonight

Just a sampling of why we are re-shooting the Christmas card photo tonight.

It is so fun to look out the window and see the kids playing in the snow today. They were thrilled when they woke up and I spoke the words "NO SCHOOL!" Nate is also working from home, it's like one big party. Kind of.

We have three lovely snowmen in our front yard from last week and one of them is as tall as me. He freaks me out at night when I walk by the window, I double-take because I keep thinking there is an axe murderer in our front yard. I promise that in the daytime he looks nothing like a psycho, he is a very friendly looking fellow. There are two snowforts in the back yard, and they are working on a tunnel in the front as I type. And it continues to snow. Love love love it.

Coal in my stocking?

In keeping with self inflicted theme of the season, procrastination, we attempted our Christmas card photo last night. Note the word attempted. A few weeks ago, actually on Thanksgiving day, we took our extended family photo with my parents and siblings. We used a regular film camera, on a tripod, with a timer, and there were sixteen people involved. My mom just got the pictures back and every single one of them turned out perfect. My children smiled like angels.

Now fast forward to last night, only eight people, a photographer (my mom) and a digital camera. PURE CHAOS. It was the kind of situation where you are grinning ear to ear but secretly pinching kids and hissing into their little ears "you better knock it off and smile or there will be NO dessert for you." I know, it doesn't sound like a very heavy threat but in this house, that's huge. I might as well have said that I would cut off one of their limbs. But no, they didn't all smile nice, at least not all at once. There were also lighting issues and some flash induced red-eyes that made me look like a raging psycho crazy woman, which isn't that far from the truth. I tried to do a little tweaking and editing but alas, I don't have photo shop and paint just wasn't cutting the mustard. I see retakes in our very near future, hopefully before Christmas.

The photo shoot was an appropriate way to end the day. It was as though my children were little vampire bats fluttering around me and slowing sucking away my life. Morbid? Maybe. Some highlights were the cheetos incident, the perfectly staggered naps so that no more than one child was ever asleep at once, the glimmer in a four year old's eye that said, "I'm looking for trouble today", and a little girl's meltdown over an assault on her very-most-specialist porcelain doll. I felt as though I was being tested and I'm pretty sure that I failed miserably. Don't you just love coming here and listening to me whine??! Happy thoughts Heth, happy thoughts. The one thing that went really really well was bedtime. I sent them all to bed a little bit early.....ok, an hour early, and they were out within five minutes. I snuggled up on the couch with a cup of cocoa and a Spongebob fleece blanket and gazed at the now ever so green Christmas tree. (a little food coloring in the water works miracles) It was so quiet, and so peaceful. Sigh. Today started off a whole lot better, besides how can a day go wrong when it begins with a plate full of pancakes?

Verses

This blog serves many purposes for me. A way to stay in touch with friends and family, a way to express some of my feelings on life, mothering and dessert, but most importantly to capture some of the fleeting moments of my kids' lives and remember them, like an online babybook. Because goodness knows, the last four kids' babybooks are lacking in the content department. So bear with me and my random posts and excessive and improper use of commas. If you haven't noticed, I get a little comma crazy. Anyway, all that to say.....

We are working on our weekly bible verses a little more diligently recently. We let it slide for awhile, but we are back with a vengeance. I even went back to drawing little reminder pictures on construction paper and pinning them to the kitchen wall. Last week's preschooler verse was easy enough. "You will give birth to a son." Luke 1:31 Mary and baby Jesus, easy to draw. The girl's verse was a little more abstract, "Though I walk through the midst of trouble, You preserve my life". Psalm 138:7. I didn't really know what to draw, but I came up with this. A cartoon of Noelle and Camryn walking down a little path, holding hands. On Camryn's side was a tornado, on Noelle's a mean man with a gun. Big giant hands are covering them, or as Caedmon puts it a "shield". The best part was hearing Caedmon try to recite the girls' verse: "Though I walk in the doom of the mist."

The best present of all

Our shopping trip last night was a success! We only bought about seven gifts, but we bought ourselves the best present in the whole world:

A new fridge lock.

We had little safety locks on our fridge and freezer that I bought when Caedmon was two. At some point the one on the fridge broke. Fast forward to this year....Jack is two. Somehow I seemed to have missed the memo that yesterday was a very special holiday. It was the ever popular Living Room Cheese Festival. You know, the one where you drag out all of the various types of cheese into the living room and then proceed to open a few "American slices", wad them up, and crumble them into the carpet. Imagine my emotions when I stepped out of my warm morning shower to find that this holiday had been celebrated without me. Thus the fridge lock.

The shopping trip was also a success because we ate at Famous Daves, a restaurant that I had been wanted to go back to for about four years now but my vote was always vetoed. I hadn't eaten there since the pregnancy-induced-cravings-for-ribs when I was expecting Caedmon. Last night I was able to feast upon roasted chicken with about four different bbq sauces, and corn bread muffins were heavenly as were the mashed potatoes. We were stuffed, and yet we shopped. And happily, we are able to cross a few people off of the list. But there is much more shopping to be done,

Yay! Another reason to go back to Target.

Procrastination?

Tonight we will buy our first Christmas presents for this year. I've never been one to plan ahead and buy people things in June or September, I love being in the stores when all the decorations are up and there is snow on the ground. We usually wait until mid-December, it's funner in December. (is funner even a word? Maybe that should have been more fun, oh well) Nate and I are going to catch some supper, buy a few gifts, and voila, instant date. Well, instant date with Gemma tagging along. Have a great weekend everyone, and drink some cocoa, it's yummie.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOLLY!

It's my sister's birthday. I wish she lived closer, she is SO much fun to be around.

Today, in honor of you, I am going to "play office" with my kids. When Holly was little, she loved playing school (as long as she got to be the teacher) and playing office. She had a desk full of all sorts of paper, scissors, pens, pencils, markers etc., and she was constantly trying to talk one of us into sitting down and filing paperwork with her. So today, I think I am going to have Caedmon work on a spreadsheet for me, and maybe Jack can sharpen pencils or something.

Holly, I love ya and I hope you have an AMAZING day. Cut out of the office a little bit early, get yourself a Chai at Caribou, eat lots of mint ice cream, watch a movie and fall asleep after the first ten minutes, and find someone to rub your feet for you. I would if I was there.

I love being your sister.

It sucks to be OUR rabbit.

Poor little Banjo. He had no idea what was coming when he was released into that little arena at the fair. I'm sure it was very traumatic to be chased around by a bunch of preschoolers, and I'm sure if he had ANY idea of what was to come, he would have scratched and clawed just a little harder.

Caedmon caught and named Banjo the summer of 2004. We were very surprised that he made it through last winter, as he is an "outside" bunny. He lives in a little hutch behind the garage, and I'm almost positive that he is bored out of his mind. He has thrived, if you measure thriving by weight gain. The kids take turns feeding the big fatty, it's one of the few chores with a life hanging in the balance. Actually, it's the only chore in that category, but I would argue that doing the dishes after supper is a contender. After being away last night and coming home to a sink full of dishes, I was feeling a little bit like I wanted to take someone's life.

Right now, Noelle is on Banjo duty. She is very diligent to change his water a couple of times a day, since in this weather it freezes solid the minute you step out the door. I'm sure she has some kind words for him since she is the animal lover of the family. Maybe she promises him trips into the house, or carrots, or a little bunny "friend". I hate to break the news, but those are all empty promises. We brought him in the house once, the poor thing was terrified of vinyl flooring. We don't want any more little baby Banjos running around so a "friend" is out of the question, but I suppose the carrots are a possibility.

Next time you see a little bunny in your backyard or god forbid, dead on the side of the road, think of our Banjo. Think of him fondly.