Do Dreams Really Come True?

There is a giveaway over at Five Minutes for Mom. A free Dyson. It's sad the things we lust after when we become moms.

To The Baby That Won't Leave Her Diaper On:

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Camryn

Sometimes you change clothes three or four times a day, leggings and jean skirts, shoes to match your mood. Most mornings when I come into the soft pink room that you three girls share, I can find you up on the top bunk snuggled up with your big sister. I hope you two always share the closeness that you do now, best friends and sisters, what a perfect match. You still have a deep love for penguins, and for drawing them. Your stuffed "Pengwee" joined the family this Christmas. If the job of town crier ever became available, you would be the perfect person to take the position. When ever there is news to be shared, good or bad, you love to make sure that everyone in the family knows. I love that about you. As the weather has become a teensy bit warmer, you have taken every opportunity to fly up and down the street on your bike, laughing all the way. I'm really looking forward to summertime when your freckles make their appearance across the bridge of your tan little nose. You wear your swimsuit all summer long, whether we are going swimming or not. Bring on year eight!

Happy Birthday Camryn.

Mariah

Somehow this year you have changed from a sporty thirteen year old who didn't care much for dressing up or wearing pink, to a fabulous (but still athletic) fourteen year old who wears adorable jeans and glamorous sunglasses. I'm still waiting for your feet to catch up with mine so that I can borrow all of your cute shoes.

You are beautiful Mariah, inside and out. Happy Birthday little sister.

Behold, the Power of Sugar

This morning a verse jumped off of the pages of my bible.

1Corinthians 6:12 All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

This afternoon I was driving home from a shopping trip with a half empty bag of Frosted Circus Animal Crackers nestled in my lap. Slowly that verse eased it's way from the back to the front of my mind. I closed the bag and moved it to the passenger seat with a deep sigh. Sometimes conviction stinks.


Also, just for the record. All three of my littlest ankle biters were perfect angels in Target today. I just felt like I needed to write that down. And maybe date it. March 21st, 2007.

Fire Up Your Printer

I think I have made it abundantly clear that I love Twinkies. Let's all take a look at the math going on behind this lovely treat.
Sponge cake + creme filling = perfection.

When I turned 30 this year, (I still don't want to talk about it) two of my dear friends hooked me up with a dream come true. (my running partners of all people!) The flower delivery guy came to my door with 30 balloons. You can see them here where Jack was releasing them from their ribbon leashes to dance upon the ceiling. Tied to the bottom of these beautiful balloons was the perfect gift. A bag of pecan pie flavored coffee and a cook book. Not just any cook book, a Twinkie cookbook full of 40 recipes to be made using a secret ingredient: Twinkies. Some of the concoctions include Twinkie Sushi, Twinkie Pancakes, Ribbons and Bows Twinkie Wedding Cake, Twinkie Milkshake, Twinkie-Misu, and Deep Fried Twinkies with Raspberry Syrup. Because if a Twinkie is only 150 calories, you DEFINITELY need to deep fry it to add some more Yippee! to the party.

We tried the Twinkie pancakes as soon as we possibly could. Basically, you make your regular pancake batter and when you pour the batter onto the griddle, you place 3 thin slices of Twinkie onto the top of each pancake before you flip it. Then you flip it. Then you put in on your plate, drown it in butter and syrup and gobble it right down. I can't begin to express to you how fabulous those pancakes were. The marriage of my two food loves. *sigh*

Last night we tried another recipe from this now-a-family-heirloom cookbook. Twinkie Ice Cream Cake. Because I am a kind and giving and loving person, I am going to share this recipe with you. A couple of notes: Make sure you use an extra deep pan or you will be swimming in melted ice cream. I didn't plan ahead so I had to cut back on the amount of ice cream I used so that it all fit into the pan, but it was still delicious. Also, make sure you set aside some Twinkies for eating while you make this. Don't muzzle the ox.

Twinkie Ice Cream Cake

Crust:
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
6 tablespoons butter, melted

1/2 gallon chocolate ice cream (in a box), slightly thawed
18 Twinkies (plus the ones you are going to eat)
1/2 gallon vanilla ice cream, at room temperature
1/2 cup chocolate sauce
1 cup frozen nondairy whipped topping, thawed
candy sprinkles or toasted chopped nuts for decorating (optional)

To prepare crust, combine the cracker crumbs, confectioners' sugar, and melted butter in a bowl and mix well. Transfer to a 9 by 13 inch baking dish and press evenly into the bottom of the dish.
Cut the chocolate ice cream crosswise into 1 inch thick slices and arrange on top of the crust. Cut 12 of the Twinkies in half lengthwise and arrange cut side down in a single layer over the chocolate ice cream.
Cut the remaining 6 Twinkes into 1 inch pieces and stir into the softened vanilla ice cream. Spread the vanilla ice cream mixture over the Twinkies. Drizzle on the chocolate sauce, then spread with the whipped topping. Decorate with candy sprinkles or nuts.
Freeze for at least 2 hours, until firm. Set out 10-15 minutes before serving. Cut into squares to serve.

Now print this out and make it. I mean it.

A Dozen Years

When you were a toddler you would stumble into the kitchen in the mornings all grouchy and shaky, your little mind focused on one thing: cereal. It was your infantile version of a coffee addiction. Every morning I groggily poured you a bowlful while half asleep myself and you hovered over that bowl with your quivering hands, dripping milk all over everything. Once your belly was full, you were magically transformed into a happy child and you were ready to start the day. I looked across the kitchen table at at you with your chubby hands and a head full of blonde hair and I smiled. And then I blinked and now you are twelve.

Happy Birthday Tyler.

Who Wrote this Story Anyway?

This afternoon as I was trying to coerce my three and a half year old into taking a nap so that I could take one too, I told him the story of Goldilocks and the three Bears. It seems he had never heard it before, oops. I'm sure I have told it to the older kids a million times but somehow I hadn't shared this classic little story with him yet. As the story unfolded I got to thinking about it a little bit. Now I know it's make-believe and everything but some things about it just don't make sense at all.

• The three bowls of porridge have been sitting on the table the same amount of time. Why is the Papa Bear's porridge still hot when Mama's is cold and Baby's is just right? Did he have a bigger portion, Mama had an "on a diet" sized portion and baby just had a regular amount? Was there a draft?
  
• I'm assuming Goldilocks weighs about the same amount or less than the Baby bear. So what's up with the chair breaking? Was she jumping on it? Was she a very large little girl?
  
• Three beds? Were Papa and Mama bear having some marriage issues? Or maybe they just needed a sleep number bed but couldn't afford one. Papa bear would have probably had a sleep number of 90 and Mama might have been more around a 35 or so.
  
• Obviously they didn't believe in co-sleeping or having a family bed.
• They must make their beds every day because it was very clear to them that someone had been messing up the covers. At our house, you would have never known until you heard Goldi snoring.
  

Anyway, the story poses more questions than answers. I shouldn't be thinking about these things so hard, but this is what happens when you are drowning in children. You start to pick apart fairy tales.

At Least We Aren't a Family of Crocodiles

I have avoided it long enough. When I got the reminder in the mail from the dentist's office that was addressed to the whole Laundry family, I knew it was time to just bite the bullet and start scheduling appointments. I reluctantly called and inquired as to who needed to be seen. There was a long pause on the other end of the line and she started reciting to me the dates of the last visits for each family member. I'm not going to disclose those dates here, just writing this is humiliating enough, but I will say that the most recent visit was in 2005. My almost 8 year old has never been. I think maybe Nate was last seen in the late 90's. It's almost embarrassing how long we have let our dental exams slide. I promise, we DO brush our teeth around here, but actually taking time to go in to have them looked at....not so much.

Today was the first round. I'm only taking them in two at a time because honestly, I don't think the dentist has a whole day to devote to just our family. I also don't think the dentist wants my little ones sitting in the waiting room for 8 hours. You can only read Dr. Seuss books so many times before your brain turns to mush, mushy, slushy, slush. Before I left, I scheduled the rest of the crew and I now possess enough appointment reminder cards to make a flip book. The cavity total from today's visit? One kid came away with none but the other with three and a recommendation for sealants. And also there was mention of a future of braces for both of them due to their short lifetimes of thumb sucking. That was just the first two kids. I think we will take out a second mortgage on our house now. Or maybe just getting some dental insurance would be in order.

Of course I consoled myself the most appropriate way I could think of, by stuffing my face with Hershey's kisses. Have you seen the ones with vanilla creme inside? Yum. Hey, it's nothing that a couple of toothbrushes can't handle. There are always more than enough around here and after this dental escapade is all over, we will be able to brush the teeth of a small army. Bring on the free toothbrushes, baby!

A Tale of A Kitchen

When we bought this house, our kitchen was a lovely shade of country blue and tan wallpaper. Ohmygoodness I wish I had a photo to show you but let me assure you, it was not pretty. Needless to say that was one of the first rooms that we repainted. We spent hours tearing that stuff off of the walls and then brightened the room up with some yellow paint. I loved my yellow kitchen and the red back door. My mom sewed some cheery tulip curtains for me and they were perfect. The room was yellow for seven years.

Last month I decided it was time to change again. I had new dishes and I wanted to use them as a catalyst to get myself a whole new room. I chose some paint and got to work. Now let me just note that we were having a dinner party at our house on a Saturday night. What would a crazy pregnant lady like me decide to do? How about paint the kitchen on Thursday! So I did. I also had a whole list of projects for Nate to take care of like hanging curtains and installing a new light fixture and hanging up my pottery-barn-knock-off-message-center thingy. We worked our ever-loving butts off and got it all done just in the nick of time. Without killing each other. Here are some photos of the finished room. My flash really distorted the colors. The walls truely are blue, not the washed out white that shows up here. The bulletin board really does go with the dishes, I promise. Just trust me. So here is a quick tour.

This is the pottery-barn-knock-off-message-center thingy. I saw it in their catalog but didn't want to pay a couple hundred dollars for it, so I hit the lumber yard. I picked up some cork board, some peg board, and some masonite . I painted the pegboard red and the masonite with black chalkboard paint and then made Nate hang it all up. Like I said, the flash killed my wall color in this photo. Picture "Heavenly Breeze" blue.

This is me winging a window treatment. I picked up the curtain at Target with my fingers crossed that it would match. It did. Hooray! Then I needed something to hang on the three hooks that have been above the window since forever ago when I had actual plants hanging there. I decided to make a little craft and hung these letters. It' helps to remind the kids why we are all sitting around the table every night. And again, the color is all wrong. The blue in the frames is not near that dark and the wall is not so bleh.

Now when you see this picture you might think "what the heck?" But this is just me being a dork with my camera. For the first week or so after I finished the kitchen, I would come up the stairs from doing laundry or surfing the internet and I would get a glimpse of the room and remember "Oh yeah! That's right, I re-did the kitchen!" And I just loved it with the light fixture and the flowers and the paint color. So I took a picture. This photo is a whole lot more true to the colors in the room. That would be because I ditched the flash.
So there you have it. My kitchen is new. Well, except for the gold linoleum floor that we have been intending to replace for, let's see, seven years now. In fact when we painted the kitchen yellow, we pulled off all of the baseboards and didn't put them back up because why put them back up when you are going to get a new floor?.......seven years later. And there's also the non-wood super dark nasty cupboards but I don't want to talk about that.

Just Helping Webster Out a Little Bit

des·per·ate (děs'pər-ĭt)
adj.

1. Having lost all hope; despairing.
2. Marked by, arising from, or showing despair
3. Reckless or violent because of despair: a desperate criminal.
4. Undertaken out of extreme urgency or as a last resort: a desperate attempt to save the family business. Or in my case: a desperate search for a rubberband for my hair that included digging through the pile of Barbies because maybe one of them is wearing a ponytail just like I wanted to.

Time

Last night we sat around watching home videos from four year ago. Four years isn't a very long time. Or is it? I was shocked at how much my kids had changed in that short time, some of them weren't even born yet. They all giggled at their own antics and I giggled too, at least a little bit. Part of me was really sad. I mourned the passing of that stage in each of their lives. Looking back you can see a bit of who they are now in the who they were then. But time doesn't let you look ahead to see a glimpse of who they will be. As I watched those moments on the tv, I tucked some of them away in my heart for a rainy day.

Jenni over at One Thing has written a beautiful reflection on the passing of time. Make sure you read her post Not I, if you explore her site at all, prepare yourself for some breath taking writing. And if you have a few minutes of extra time today (who really does?) why don't you pull out a home movie from four years ago and soak in how much of a difference a few years can make.

He Really Is a Good Little Monkey

George becomes curious about potty training.

Four Questions.

Question number one:

Am I a bad person because I went through the 20 items or less lane with *gasp* twenty two items? Ok, this is huge because I am normally not a rule breaker. I just can't break the rules. And also, one of my biggest pet peeves is people with a cart full, trying to sneak through on the speedy checkout lane. But yesterday when I saw that all the lanes were backed up at least three carts and every person looked like they were stocking up for the next two weeks, I glanced over at the 20 items or less lane. Not so bad. One family checking out, one guy with an arm full of stuff and room for me. YAY! I did a quick mental tally of the items in my cart and figured I was right at 20 items. Oops, I guess two bunches of bananas count as two seperate items, as do two cans of liquid squirty cheese. We are a picture of healthy eating. So long story short, my conscience ate away at me as I piled my loot on the 12" by 12" square of counter top. The glares coming from the couple behind me didn't really help. Sure enough, when I was handed my receipt the number of items sold read a shocking 22. I didn't sleep well last night.


Question number two:

Am I the only one who dances in my car? I really need to know because I don't want to be the only dancing-while-driving idiot. I never notice anyone else getting their grove on while stopped at a down town traffic light. Sometimes a really great song will come on and I just rock it out. I don't dance well, but something about sitting down with a seat belt across my shoulder makes me feel a whole lot better about my abilities. My passengers think I'm weird. What do they know anyway? None of them have even hit puberty yet.


Question number three:

Not really a question but just an apology for my commas, again. I warned you in my profile, I suck at commas. I read through an old post and was shocked at my lack of comma skills. Believe it or not, I did really well in grammar and all other forms of English in school. Once I graduated, I made up my own rules and decided to just throw a comma in anywhere I wanted a pause. So sorry. Also, just to get it off of my chest, I don't remember how to write in real cursive. I made up my own form of half printing, half cursive and I've just gone with it. There, I feel much better.


Question number four:

Again, not a question but just a loud exclamation of YIPPEE! It looks like no crazy ice/snow storms will be coming our way this week, which means that the kids will be back in school, Nate will be back at work, and we can all stumble back into some sort of a routine. A routine that includes chores, meals at predictable times, naps for small children and pregnant mothers, and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. Hooray!

Wordless Wednesday-Fingerpainting

Seventeen

My baby brother Luke is seventeen today. Here's to the guy who:

...golfs bare chested.

...can ninja with the best of them.

...rips it up on the skateboard.

...has the patience of Job when it comes to waiting in line for a new game system.

Happy Birthday Old Lu.

Weekend Recap

Thank you all so much for your comments on that last post. I was really nervous to put myself out there like that. It's not something that gets talked about much so I was really opening my heart to you all, and you were all so kind.

We are on our last day of a four day weekend. The kids were off of school on Friday and then we had the big storm that ended up being the Big Ice. We were promised 13-20 inches of snow but ended up with lots and lots of freezing rain. The weirdest was looking out the window and seeing snow but hearing thunder and lightning. Kind of creepy but kind of cool.


The kids had a blast playing on the ice. They went out on Saturday in the middle of it all and ran and slipped and slid around the yard. I went out to take pictures and barely made it back up the front steps to get back into the house. It was really a pretty sight, the pregnant lady sliding around outside the front door, practically crawling up the steps into the house. I would have done much better if I would have been wearing ice skates. When the kids came back inside, Jack's hood had a sheet of ice covering it. He was like a little human ice cube. Don't you think these are a little more appropriate than your typical snowman? They scream "ice storm".

We ate homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles. (Sometimes I surprise myself with my domestic abilities) I also nursed the latest round of sickies back to health. I swear, this is the marathon of stomach bugs. It just. never. ends. It's like 26.2 days of sickness, just when we think we have kicked it, someone else gets taken out. I'm starting to get a little T.O.'d about the whole thing, but for now I'm crossing my fingers that this is it and we are done. Please God, I'm begging you. I'm not a health, wealth and prosperity type of girl, but I'll take a little bit of the health part if you don't mind.

So now it's Monday and there's no school. Nate is working from home and we are all feeling pretty cooped up. I might just be desperate enough to take the whole crew to the local fast food playland. We wouldn't really be bringing any new germs to the place, they already have every strain imaginable. Or maybe I will crack the whip on chores and we can get this place spic and span and then take naps. I vote for option number two, minus the cleaning, just the naps.

Why We Have a Million Kids

(This post is controversial. I am sharing MY personal beliefs and where God has brought me. In no way am I trying to force my thinking onto anyone else. There is so much more that I could write about this topic, but I'm going to try to keep it fairly short.)

A couple of days ago I was asked to write about why we have decided to have a large family. The comment brought a smile to my face, I could tell it was written with genuine interest as opposed to the more common shock and disbelief with which most people ask that question.

We started our family when we were young. Very young. We had a son and then less than two years later, a daughter. We were living far away from home, Nate was in college and we were dirt poor. Diiiiiirt poor. As Nate was wrestling with finishing up school and choosing his career path, we discovered that I was pregnant again. This pregnancy came as we took a happy turn in our lives. We had decided to move back to our home town, our lives were moving in a new direction. I remember sitting in a grocery store parking lot before the sun rose, waiting to pick up boxes for packing our belongings. I was oh so nauseous, the first few weeks of my pregnancy kept me on the verge of being sick at any given moment, but I was so, so happy. We were going home. And we were taking a rapidly growing little family with us.

We came back to our home town and we settled in to a new job and a new house and what do you know? I was pregnant again. If I was to be honest, I really struggled when I looked down at those two pink lines. What the heck were we doing? Didn't God know that I was struggling to keep it together with the three little ones that I already had? Why was He throwing another one into the mix so soon? Nate and I spent that next week coming to terms with the news. But then, by the end of the week, I started to miscarry. I was shocked at my emotions. How could I have been so hesitant just a few days ago and now I felt like my heart was being ripped out at the idea of losing this baby. God was beginning to work in me in a small way that I would look back and understand so much more deeply.

We grieved the loss of that little baby. I was faced with feelings that I had never felt before. We had always been able to become pregnant even without really trying or even thinking about it, and here I was, mourning over an empty womb. My heart bled as I watched other pregnant moms with their blossoming bellies, and I felt so raw. So dead. It was a teensy, tiny glimpse into the feelings that women must have when all they want is a child and their bodies won't comply.

We didn't wait the six weeks like the doctor recommended to become pregnant again. I had been hit with a two ton truck, I realized how much I truly desired to have another child. And this is when God started changing my heart. He placed women into my life who spoke new truths to me. He began to take my small little worldview and He tweaked it, and started showing me what HE had in mind. How HE views children. Nate and I battled through this together. Sometimes we were each other's opponents, and other times we were fighting side by side against what society tells us about kids and families. We dove into the the Word of God and we pleaded with Him to show us what He desired from us for our family.

I can't believe how my thinking has made a 180 degree turn. I used to slide right along side the popular thinking that kids were great and everything, but we needed to get them into the world quickly and close together so that we could get them grown and then get on with life. And it didn't seem that harsh when I was thinking it, but now when I look back, that's truly the lie that I was buying into. God challenged me to my inner core when he asked me to rethink my view on children. His word says that they are a blessing. A blessing. Was the way that I was living really reflecting that belief? Did I trust Him to take care of our family? To provide for us and to bring little souls into the world in His timing, or was I going to grab the steering wheel and show Him the best way? These are the questions that were laid onto my heart and I had to wrestle through each one personally and then with my husband.

So far, we have been given six, almost seven, beautiful healthy children. I cannot even begin to express to you the awe I stand in when I look at each one of them. They truly are woven by His hand. If I would have had my own way, who knows what our family would look like right now, but I can tell you that we would have missed out on some amazing blessings and lessons and joys that were planned by Him. I don't know how many kids we will have. It is the million dollar question that we are asked countless times by curious friends and family. All I know is that I don't want to miss out on something that the God of the universe has for me, because I want to limit His hand. Sure, if we had a lot less kids, we would have a lot more money, and a lot more time. You know what, that's not what I want in this life. I want to follow Him, even if his path isn't the most popular one, even if we look like weirdos. I'm learning a lot about myself through these little people in my life. Some things that are amazing and somethings that are ugly. I know I have a whole lot more to learn and I want Him to teach me. If these life lessons are taught through little people who pass though my home and into His world, then bring 'em on. My heart has plenty of room.

Does IHOP Deliver?

Did you know that yesterday was Pancake Day? Yeah, me neither. DANG IT!

Wordless Wednesday- Ouch?

More Wordless Wednesdays here.