and baby makes 6!

To my beautiful curly haired child

When I said you could have some graham crackers, I did not mean that you could use a scissor to cut them into shapes. I do feel that I must thank you for filling in the cracks between the wood floor planks under your chair with the crumbs. Very creative! I, personally, was planning on summer humidity and heat expanding the boards, thus the cracks disappearing. Now we must get busy and crumble up 100 more boxes of graham crackers so we can fill in the rest of the kitchen floor.

I love you,
Mommy

We are not really here. Well, just our bodies are.

We do not exist in this world anymore. We exist in the world of the perpetual vacation.

We hustle on Friday to pack the Little House, pick up the kids from school and get the hell out of Dodge. We have spasmotic convulsions about 20 miles from home as the toxins of day to day life leave our bodies.

Our kids stop fighting and play together without issues.

We go for walks and spend 10 minutes looking at a spider web covered in dew, reflecting the gold of the rising sun:

We wake each morning and have coffee on a walk through a state park.

Then we return home, begin assimilation and immediatly pull out the calender and plot our next escape.

Our kids start fighting again.

I have to clean something bigger than 500 square feet.

There are plugs, and vacuums to plug into them for the “Loved One Who Must Have Clean Floors Every Second of the Day”. There are fund raisers, scheduled commitments, Boy Scout Banquets……….

Ameri-camp, take me away.

My new home

Okay, so I am giving this a go. Here is my new home!

hang in with me while I wet my feet with Wordpress

Goose Island SP

We took off again in the Little House and enjoyed the beauty of Goose Island State Park. Oh, it was….well, a picture says a thousand words so, here ya go:

The pier that went on forever:

The Great Egret:

Camp site. We woke up to the most beautiful sunrise over the bay:

The water was so clear this weekend, it reminded me of Cozumel (well, almost):

Trying to find the end of the rainbow:

Father and daughter:

Yet another attempt to get all 4 to smile:

Oyster shell:

There is a set of our trip titled Goose Island SP on Flickr. Go have a peek…..

Catching her shadow

October, 2004

Morning routine

Chris and Carmen have teamed up to do posts on “The day in the life of a larger than average family” each Wednesday. Today’s topic is The Morning Routine, and everyone is invited to post their routine, then link to it in the comment section of Chris’ blog. Carmen starts her day at 5:30, as did Chris, jokingly. The only time I have ever seen the clock read 5:30am was when I was still working as an RN 2 1/2 years ago, or when my husband wakes me because, well, you who have many kids know that this is the ONLY time when aloneness is possible. That or somewhere around 2am……….and therefore I will shuffle on ahead to the more forgiving hour of 6:30

6:30 Bill leaps out of bed on the first beep after his wrist watch goes off. Show off.

6:33 Bill has showered, shaved and dressed.

6:34 Bill leaves to get milk, the paper, gas for the car, to save the world, find a cure for cancer and pet the dog.

6:40 Bill sets the table.

6:50 Bill wakes the boys.

(are you seeing a trend here?)

6:51 Bill wakes me then puts water on to boil for oatmeal.

6:55 I untangle myself from the arms and legs that belong to Mia and head into the bathroom. I throw a sweatshirt over my tank gown and head to the kitchen, shushing the boys every 15 seconds so they DO NOT wake the sleeping baby.

7:00 Begin making lunches for the kids.

7:01 Ask Quinn what kind of sandwich he wants. Proceed to listen to complaints that range from “I hate sandwiches” to “My stomach hurts” to instructions about how big the sandwich should be. Make note to self to never ask 5yo that question… NEVER, EVER again.

7:05 Pack lunch bag with tortilla wraps, fruit of the day, granola or crackers, and water bottle. Break up the 10th “He looked at me” fight this morning.

7:10 Begin the ritual of making the perfect cup of macchiato for myself and Bill while he feeds kids oatmeal with raisins.

7:11 Daughter walks in the room and declares she wants a boobie.

7:12 Begin nursing daughter in sling, because espresso must not wait.

7:20 Sit down while still nursing Mia and drink coffee (ahh) while watching kids pick raisins out of oatmeal. Talk with them about their day.

7:30 Hustle kids into bathroom to brush hair and teeth.

At EXACTLY 7:37 EVERY morning, the kids are ushered outside and off they go to school. If it is a minute later, well by God, Bill stresses that they are going to be late, or the sky will fall….whichever comes first. They are supposed to be there by 7:55. It takes them 2 minutes to get there. He is efficient.

7:45 Get up out of chair and wash dishes.

7:50 Sit down and visit with Bill while Mia eats solid food instead of Boobies

8:20 Kiss Daddy-O goodbye, go inside and turn on computer.

8:20-9:30 Turn on TV and tune in to Sesame St. (or Dora). for Mia. Read e-mails, write posts, wonder why oh why doesn’t Wordpress have spell check. Start checking my blogroll from the top down. Make it 1/4 down the list before must clean up first spill of the day.

9:30-10:00 Make beds, pick up jammies from floor. Open laundry hamper, stuff clothes into it. Sigh. Make mental note to start a load of laundry and realize my faults and admit to self that it will not get done.

10:00 to whenever. Move from room to room picking up toys, sippy cups and such. Stop for short bursts of computer time. Play games and dollies with Mia. Make second cup of that blessed nector of the Gods called espresso. Prepare lunch for myself Mia and Bill.

Thus begins my most productive time of day…the afternoon. That is when I truly shine. So I will post that tomorrow. Because, well, it is afternoon now and I have the attic to clean of all the accumulated crap that will be sold in a garage sale in 2 weeks. We are de-cluttering our lives, room by room. It is so liberating to get rid of all the material stuff! You know?

And yes, you are right, the laundry is still in the hamper.

While I waited, God created

How does God answer prayers?
In His time,
so they say.

Just one look at her
and you must admit,
It was time spent perfecting her smile.

Sing a joyful song…….

Quinn was overheard singing a special song this morning. Notice the ad libbing of the 2nd and 4th verses.

La cucaracha, la cucaracha,
Eeny meanie miney mo;
La cucaracha, la cucaracha,
Eeny meanie miney mo;

Can the cuteness get much better than this?

24 hours of grease

Can you inject Dawn into your arteries? I need some de-greasing.

I cooked 2 pounds of bacon yesterday morning…………it is gone.

After having consumed , oh, say 6 pieces of bacon yesterday morning, in the chaos of my day I failed to eat anything else until around 6:30 pm. At that moment, I was on a cricket run to the city, and the “I have to eat NOW’s” hit me! I stopped at Wait-A-Burger and ordered a #1. If I eat take out like this, I usually just get the fries OR the burger….not both. I ate all of it including 1/2 the gigaticus regular Coke.

HOW do people eat like this on a daily basis. I thought I was going to be sick all evening. My Gawd, it was NASTY. Don’t get me wrong, it tasted great while I was eating it, but the gall bladder effect afterwards was enough to make me never do that again.

As for the bacon, how gross is that that a family of six can swoop through 2lb’s of bacon in less than a day? 2lbs is a heck of alot of bacon. Are we a 4lb bacon family now? shudder I can’t imagine sitting in front of the stove and cooking 4lbs of splattering fat.

Now, I leave you with something to make the cholesterol in your arteries solidify just by reading it. Gak!

The low down and for those who do not like cursing, please cover your eyes

Why, oh why do we have to have real life, with jobs, bills, cat litter, school, etc. Coming home from our little trip this weekend was about as enjoyable as having all of my eye lashes removed with a tweezer.

I really love my house, so this is saying a great deal about how much I love being with my family at the beach, in a trailer. It was heaven. We popped popcorn and watched a movie together in our little house, and spent most of the daylight hours outside at the park, at the water slide or on the docks fishing and soaking up some sun.

The trailer is eveything we hoped it would be. Plenty of room for all of us, comfortable, and we are now referring to it as our beach house. It tows like a dream, and Bill’s truck has no problems at all with the weight. I felt all of the tension I have been experiencing disappear…totally.

Real life…..coming home to the rut we are in was a total drag. I am nearing the Terrible Time of the month, so I can contribute much of my irritation to that, but some of it is just being sick and tired of the day to day monotony.

In addition, I have been a real b_ _ ch to Bill this week, not that he hasn’t deserved some of it (I guess I have to ask myself if anybody deserves to be treated badly), but normally I don’t freak out about the small stuff. But, Lord, I had a temper tantrum that rivaled anything Mia is capable of, even while she is on that hateful crap Benadryl, and it culminated in me gently heaving the laptop into the grass in the front yard. Real mature, I know. Those who know me in real life will laugh because this is totally uncharacteristic of me. The funny part is it was a direct result of Bill telling me I spend too much time on the computer, which I do….duh! I try not be online when he is home, but sometimes I get bored and log on. Well, he ragged me about it and I snapped. I tossed it gently into the grass, then stomped into our room. It was a bit dewy outside, so I sat in my room and worried about the circuit board getting wet etc. Bill made no move to get up and bring it in, so I gave it about 30 minutes, then went quietly outside to retrieve it. As you can see, it had no hard feelings and continued to work without a problem. What the hell was my point in doing that?

Well, I was just pissed, that is all. Pissed that Bill comes in and recleans the kitchen floors when he gets home from work, even though they were swept and mopped an hour earlier. Pissed that my kids have no clue as to what a laundry hamper is. Pissed that the freaking palmetto bugs ate through the bag on a loaf of bread (we are not dirty, these vermin are just a fact of life near the coast…I hate them with a passion) and I had to ask Bill for the millionth time when he was planning on treating the house for these vile bastards??? The laundry doesn’t get done, and he gets in lecture mode, but bugs the size of mice are eating the bread I make the kids sandwiches with, and well, he can’t take my criticism. Bah!!

I know those of you who have been here awhile are well aware of how much I adore my husband. But, Lordy, is he chapping my last nerve this week. Cancha tell?????

What is the solution? Well, for one I imagine getting my period will help. But really, what are we doing? Day in and day out we clean, do laundry, and chores, and in the end, we have a clean house, but FOR WHAT??? I know there are chores that must be done, don’t get me wrong. I am the queen of neatness and our house is so damn clean it is down right scary. But what else is there? My kids and husband are the most important things in my life, and it seems that life, and the daily tedium of it, get in the way of my most precious relationships.

I am sure many of my friends and relatives are wondering why we have purchased some mighty expensive toys in light of the fact that Bill is 48, and retirement is looming up ahead. Not to mention 4 kids to put through college etc. I have actually had people question our decision. Well, here it is. My dad worked his whole life putting money away for retirement. Vacations were rarely taken. He never bought that big sailboat he talked to me dreamily about every Saturday morning over coffee. Instead he socked the money away and when he turned 65 and reached that golden finish line, he retired, then was promptly diagnosed with terminal cancer.

I have dreams. My husband has dreams. We are not going to spend our whole adults lives saving every red cent in anticipation for those golden years . I won’t lift my hands up in victory at age 65 only to be handed a slip, like my father, that basically says “Sorry, you should have enjoyed it while you could”. Don’t get me wrong. We are saving for retirement. We fully intend to enjoy it and go on an adventure together. But in the meantime, we want to enjoy the here and now with our kids while they are still small.

So, we have bought the 5th wheel and the truck to pull it with. We are going to start exploring the world on weekends and vacation time, then who knows what. We want to spend some quality time together as a family. I will surely get annoyed with my husband, or feel overwhelmed by the kids at times. I am not in a dream land about this. But having the ocean outside my window might just take the sting out of it. You think?

Even ponies can be trailer trash.

Ponies on vacation, Aransas Pass, Texas

Photos, photos and more photos………..errrrrrr

If you go to my Flickr page, be prepared to be assaulted with a kazillion newly loaded photos. It is bad….real bad. Worse than the home movies of your great, great Aunties trip to Maui.

When I moved my site here from Typepad, I couldn’t believe how easy the transition was. Well, guess what! It wasn’t!! All of the pictures I had loaded onto Typepad for over a year made the move…….for a few months. Now they are gone. Poof! Crappity, crappity.

Soooo, I am going through each month, finding the pictures, and loading them to my Flickr account, then editing each……and…….every…….post. I am somewhere in summer 2005 right now. Ugh!

Bluehost.com better be damn sure they are in business for the long haul. Same goes for Flickr. If I have to do this over again, I may just have to give someone the hurt. Yo!

Is this in the Little Book of Manners?

How my daughter signals that she is finished eating:

His foot looks like…a straight foot!

After Quinn had his cast removed, I was apprehensive about posting a “gush” post about how wonderful his foot looked. Truth be told, it was a mess. A straight mess, but still a mess. It was stiff, peeling, stinky and he walked really funny. We spent about 2 weeks looking at each other and quietly saying “It looks worse than before”.

Fast forward, and the picture is complete, and we now know that all is well with his former clubfoot (he has decided that his clubfoot is gone and that he no longer has a “clubby”). It is fantatic. He walks straight, he stands straight, and best of all, he doesn’t trip over it and fall like he used to.

Now, the educated eye can see that something is different; but if you didn’t know he had clubfoot, you would never see a difference.

So, I present to you Quinn’s new, improved foot:

This is a TREMENDOUS improvement from before. We are pleased, and so is Quinn! It was so worth the anxiety etc. Isn’t it pretty?

Step out from behind that IP #

Who are you people?? I need to know! I have had almost 50,000 hits since I moved to this domain, so I know you are there, lurking and such. I want to know who you are! I want to visit your sites!

So this is the week that Sheryl at Paper Napkin has declared “De-lurking week”.

So……..

Stop the baby from crying and drop us a note!

Dialogue….if you can call it that.

Me: “Do you want to watch Animals?”
Mia: “Yesh, Amnimals”

So, I place “Amazing Animals” into the video recorder.

Mia explodes into a screaming, stomping mess. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”

Me: “What, I thought you wanted Animals on…okay, out they go” and I pop out the tape.

Mia explodes into a screaming, stomping mess. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Me: “What, you want to watch Amazing Animals????? In or out Mia?”

Mia: “In. Amnimals. Pleash”

In they go again, and wash, rinse, repeat all of the above at least 2 more times.

I finally remove the tape, pretend to put it back in another box, then pretend to remove it from the Amazing Animal box, then place it back in the VCR.

This time it starts and she is happy.

Me, I need someone to teach me how to read a 21 month old childs mind.

Meme

I have been tagged by Jennifer! This is the first Meme I have ever done.

Five weird habits of yourself:

“The first player of this game starts with the topic ‘five weird habits of yourself,’ and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says ‘You are tagged’ (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.”

1. I hate to touch raw chicken. This is a weird quirk I developed with my first pregnancy, and has never left me. Think Howard Hughes and you have got my chicken eeby jeebies down.

2. I surf “goofy foot”.

3. I sleep with a 5 foot long body pillow that I have had for 12 years. My husband calls it his “competition”.

4. I do not particularly like chocolate. I eat it sometimes, but rarely.

5. And the best for last…..I hand feed crickets to newts and tree frogs.

I tag Paula, Sandy, Lisa, Thicket Dweller, and Gretchen

10 Things to remember

1. Memory foam will not only remember a comfortable position you placed your body in, it will also remember the breast feeding contortionist position in which your spine was shaped like a section of Dead Mans Curve……it will mold around this and lull one into thinking they are in comfort, only to find inthe morning that is was all an illusion.

2. On a summer day, you can be sitting outside, and not see a single damn fly. Then you open a bag of chips, and they appear out of nowhere. Hold that image, and replacd the flies with my children. I cannot eat without being instantly flocked by all 4 of my poor starving children. This, my friends, is a law. Mommy cannot eat anything without sharing. I might as well grab 5 spoons when I pour myself a bowl of cereal.

3. Never, ever lift up the area rugs in a family room. Especially if there are waxed wood floors underneath. It is much better for you to not know what happened to the full cup of orange juice that disappeared off of the kitchen counter 2 weeks ago. Please trust me on this.

4. Teach your cat sign launguage so she can have a less creative way of letting you know she has a bladder infection. Yes, seeing a cat use sign language would be less impressive to me than the image of her climbing up to the second level of the toy storage rack and peeing in one of the cloth bins. She would have to be Spider Man to do this, so although I am grossed out, I am very impressed.

5. After having read that listening to iPOD for many hours can cause deafness, go to the doctor and find out if listening to the vacuum run ALL THE TIME can cause hearing loss.

6. Ditto on listening to the kids scream at each other.

7. Learn how to breed crickets. Having to run to The Big City, 50 miles away, to get crickets is not cost efficient. $2.00 for 2 dozen crickets…… 100 miles round trip at 18mpg at $2.29/gallon= lots of freaking crickets and a good incentive to let all of the frogs go FREEEEEEEE. Born freeeee, as free as the wind blooooows…………….

8. Never, never, ever reach into a Crevice from Hell to do a blind sweep and scoop out toys. You just might grab something very soft and wet, that is covered in mold and is completely unrecognizable. Is/was it some kind of food that has been there for way longer than I care to admit……………. or was it once ALIVE????

9. Never, never, ever leave a dirty diaper on the changing pad next to your closet. It might get placed in said closet by a tiny someone who is veeeeery curious and you might not find it for, say a week or more, when you begin to wonder if Pussy is again trying to cleverly tell you something.

10. Never name your cat Pussy, as the very tiny someone who hides diapers cannot pronounce things just right yet and it comes out, ironically, as “Pissy”. Yes, we have a Pissy Pussy Cat.

Hope

A recent search brought someone to my sight looking for hope. These simple words speak for themselves and brought it all back to me, awash in tears:

-4 miscarriages hope

My heart goes out to you, and yes, there is hope….I offer you proof:

I have added a new category to my sidebar titled Miscarriage Support. There are some very good support groups and a wealth of information, and I will be adding more links throughout the day. If anyone has a link they would like to add, just leave it in my comments below. I have also added a Clubfoot category.

We need a bigger driveway

And I thought the truck was big…………..

The very long 5′er arrived in Shiner at midnight last night. 3 very tired and excited boys woke me up to show me what they dragged home from the Almost Great North ;*) They pulled me out of my warm bed and onto the back porch where I saw the biggest damn trailer that the Almost Great North has ever created. It……..is……..freaking…….enormous. I thought I was going to throw up when I saw it……sort of a “Holy Mother of God, did I over do it?” moment. No, we didn’t. It is perfect. But the first sight of it took my breath away…as i am sure it did to all our neighbors as Bill’s diesel truck idled in the middle of the street in front of our driveway at 12am.

We got the 2 young boys into bed, then the adult, excited, tired boy had me out in the driveway playing with our new toy until 3am. Funny what a Dr. Pepper and a Mountain Dew will do to someone who has been driving for 18 hours straight…..through Dallas, Texas rush hour traffic and 10 miles of highway road construction with an 8000+lb RV attached to the truck. He had to knock back a vodka and OJ to settle down. But, I have to say, he did a fantastic job of backing it into our tree lined driveway at 1 a.m. . It is nestled into it, perfectly straight. It must have been the vodka.

We are very pleased with the quality and workmanship of this 5th wheel. It is everything we wanted and more. We spent the whole day in it playing with the kids and watching movies. We will do the same tonight and all weekend. Next weekend will be our shake down trip to the coast.

The love of my life and my 2 beautiful sons are home safe and sound and I have one of my dreams parked in my driveway. The possibilities are endless.

I am in my happy place!!!!!

Photos are up on Flickr.

I really need to do some house work!

My son and daughter love to get the foot lotion out and play with it. One perk for me is I am the recipient of copious amounts of lotion lathered all over my legs and feet. I present to you “A Poor Man’s Pedicure”:

They’re on the road again!

Just got word from Bill that they have picked up the 5′er and are on their way home! He said that the truck pulls it without any problems! Big relief to me!

He said the RV is beautiful. The furniture and cabinets in it are wonderful, much better than any of the other units we looked at. After a thorough walk through, the only problem that he found was a small spot on the roof edge that needed some caulking. So it seems that everything I have heard about Ameri-camp is true. They really are of excellent quality and are put together with care! Yeah! I guess only time will tell if it continues to be that way.

He said Shipshewana is very quaint. It is an Amish community, and as he was talking to me in the parking lot of a grocery store he counted 4 horse and buggy carriages parked out front. I would have liked to have seen the town. Dang that they forgot the video camera. I had it all charged and ready to go, but in the rush forgot to give it to them!

Now I anxiously await for them to make it home safely!

Travels to the Great North

It has been a frenzy of planning here. We decided on the Ameri-camp, got financing, then insurance etc. Then had to find a 5 day window in which to drive to Indiana and pick it up.* That 5 day window fell over the New Years holiday weekend.

So, Bill and our 2 oldest boys loaded up and took off on Saturday to go get it. If all goes well, we should have it in our driveway on Thursday morning!

I am really excited. I am sure I will get a full report about how it looks etc. after they take possesion of it.

They have to be out of Indiana by Tuesday afternoon to avoid a big cold front and getting snow dumped on them. Snow, a new truck, a 5′er and someone who has never towed one before makes for a bad combination.

Pictures of it in our driveway to come….for now, here is the actual unit .

*one of the guys at the RV dealership and his son were coming to Texas for a hunting trip and they were going to bring the RV with them, but the son cancelled, so the trip was called off.