Long Long Day....

It's been long because it started early, 6:24am to be exact. That's when Delilah woke me up, she was soaking wet with pee. Wonderful way to wake up. Have I ever mentioned how much I ENJOY being woke before 7am? I have? Oh, ok I will stop mentioning it.

After her bath I woke everyone else and got us all ready. I offered to drive Rosy to Hobby Lobby and to get her there when the doors opened at 9am. It's about a 45min drive to the one we went to, so as soon as I dropped the girls off we left to pick her and Alan up. We arrived just as the doors opened. She wanted a $500 Christmas tree they had on sale for $60 and they only had one left. That's why we had to be there so early. It barely fit in the van and the guy "helping" us was trying to shut my trunk door before I moved the seat up enough for it to fit. I thought he was going to bust my window out or break the damn door. When I say barely fit, I mean BARELY!

After Hobby Lobby we went to Joann's, they have Simplicity patterns on sale for 99cents this week. Not that I really needed any more, but there were a couple I needed copies of, of course they were all out of the ones I wanted. I did find an apron pattern for the older girls, they were out of the apron pattern I liked for the little girls. I may go back on payday this week. We spent quite a bit of time in there, over an hour. I found some pretty spring fabric. Sophia picked out one for herself and I picked one for Delilah. I will take the older girls to pick something for themselves soon. All but one thing I bought was on sale for 50% off or for 99 cents. And I had a 50% off coupon for the one item not on sale. I made it out of there with 5-6yards of fabric, three spools of thread, a spool of ribbon, three patterns, a green bag and a penguin pen for Sophia all for a little under $25. I don't think I am doing too badly. If I bought two outfits and a shirt for the girls (which is what I will get out of the fabric) I would spend at least that or more.

My hobby is keeping me busy enough and keeps me shopping enough to keep me happy.

After we shopped Sophia, Delilah, and I napped before picking up the girls and taking them to girl scouts. I get my cookies from Aidan tonight, yum! I am hoping to finish Lilly's shirt tonight. I had trouble with it last night, I didn't read the directions closely. I was nearly done, so it p*ssed me off, but I knew I needed to get to bed. I hate to leave things unfinished, but I would have been too frustrated to finish it easily. I want to be successful so I don't get bored and quit.

Family Pictures!

Getting Delilah to stand still was no easy task!

Lilly's the only one that looked weird in this picture, but all the rest of the pictures of the six of us my dress had lowered in the front and looked funky.

We are all looking and most of us are smiling, success! :P
The woman was wonderful, she took 82 pictures of us and didn't delete any of them.

We had left to go to Lilly's play so I didn't see these until I talked Green into bringing me the disks.

Mom and Dad

Alan wasn't real cooperative either, he wanted down. Jason paid Sophia to make him smile and laugh. It didn't work as well in their family picture as it did on his pictures alone.

Her natural smile, nice to see it usually she has a fake one planted on her face.

Aidan had fallen and bumped her mouth just before it was her turn. You can tell she had been crying.

Love it!

He's too cute!

She's hard to capture on film! But the woman managed it.

Not Much Going On....

I have stayed home pretty much all week and all last week. With the exception of last weekend when we went to the Renaissance Festival and the girls each had birthday parties. Other than that I have been hanging out at home.

This week we started what I hope will be our new routine. We walked to school to pick up the girls Monday and Wednesday, we will do it again today also. It's 3miles round trip, so that's a pretty good distance to walk. As long as it's nice I plan on doing this every Mon, Wed, and Fri. Sophia is such a good walker, she walked both times back and forth with little to no complaints. Aidan has always been my worst about walking and she burst into tears on Wed when she found out we were walking home. Of course then on the way home she asked if we could walk to school everyday, that child is full of contradictions.

Speaking of Aidan, she had her MAP testing done in school and I received the results last Friday. Basically it said she is High Average to High in all the reading components. Half of the math components she is Average to High Average, the other half however she needs to work on. Which included problem solving, so I have to work on that with her. Kale is hoping she doesn't have his math brain and that she gets mine instead. He hates math and isn't very good at it. I love math and have always excelled at math. Math to me is great, it's not subjective, there is always a right or wrong answer.

Delilah took her first steps last night! I am excited, soon I won't have to carry her chubby butt everywhere. She weighs almost as much as Sophia now. Granted Sophia is a skinny butt just like Lilly, but still they are two years apart. Alan has surpassed Sophia now, by 3 pounds. He is a big boy.

I don't have any major plans for the weekend. All I know is I get rid of my kids for a night (the older girls) when they spend the night at my parents. I will probably go home early and relax with just Delilah here.

Judy and Kale's dad David will be here next Thursday and are staying until the following Tuesday. They are coming out to help with the yard sale. Then they are going to Branson for their 40th anniversary, they have never been. They will have a good time there, as long as my fil isn't his normal stick in the mud self.

Well, I better get dressed and get to the post office. I have been telling Kale I would mail his package all week. :S

Have a good weekend!

They're here!

Stella and Meme arrived yesterday. Delilah and I were there to greet them when they came home from the airport. Stella is very tall and skinny, Meme is equally skinny but not very tall. My dad spotted right away that Stella had a hickey on her neck. She said it was from her boyfriend on her last night in Germany. My dad joked he will have to keep and eye on her, I think he is not joking as much as he lets on. She was very embarrassed and said her mother noticed it when she came home that night and was worried what my parents would think. I know exactly what my dad thinks about hickeys, he thinks they are trashy. He told me so the very first (and LAST) time I had one. He didn't even notice it, my mom did and my punishment was to call and tell him about it. He gave me a long lecture about how trashy he thinks it is and how I am better than that, must have worked I haven't ever had another one. I didn't even know I had one that night, it was my very first time making out with a guy. It was his first time too, so we didn't know it would happen. They were huge too, I mean my neck and jawline were pretty much covered. It was quite embarrassing, especially when I had waltzed in my house thinking nothing was there. Then my mom takes me aside and tells me to go look in the mirror. After that I hid it from my dad until he left for work. I am thankful my mother was always conscious not to embarrass me in front of my friends. She waited until my friends were gone before making me call him.

Anywho, Patience did take the girls swimming and my uncle Guy even came along. He doesn't get out much, he has many problems with his back, he had a house fall on him when he was 17. Long story, but he has always been kind of a hermit. He's a great guy, funny, loving, and nice but he just doesn't like to leave his house. He came along because their grandson was going too and she can't handle all four by herself. After 2 and half hours I went back to pick them up. They fussed at my uncle when he told them it was time to go, I could hear them fussing at him from outside the gate. I knew how well that would go over, he is very big on respect. I told them they had to apologize and made them feel guilty for being rude. And then he talked to them about it also. It was Lilly and Aidan, Sophia is too little to scold for to much of that, plus she came out without a fight.

I received the dress I ordered for Sophia's birthday. It's too big so I sent it to K today so she can fix it, along with some fabric I bought since she is going to make the girls halter dresses/shirts. They are going to be super cute! I am glad she can sew, I can't. I took a sewing class and home ec and still can't sew a straight line. I could probably do it, but it wouldn't be perfect and therefore I wouldn't like it. K does such a great job, I am lucky to have her as my friend. In exchange or to say thank you, I am making Abby a necklace and bracelet set with her name on them. I ordered all the stuff these past few days. I have done a couple of bracelets for her when she was a newborn and I made her a necklace with her name on it before too. But K says she needs a new one so I decided to just go ahead and do some for all the girls. I am doing Sophia and Delilah's in their birthday dress colors. I am not sure about Lilly and Aidan yet. K is thinking brown and either pink or aqua for Abby. I ordered a bunch of different colored cat's eye beads, so I have a lot to choose from. I will post pictures when I get them all done.

Today is Alan's 1st birthday party. I have his gifts but haven't wrapped them yet. I don't even think I have any boyish wrapping paper. But it's late and I am going to bed, let's hope I can sleep in tomorrow.

Have a great weekend!

Blog Bum

I kind of forgot to post yesterday, doesn't happen too often during the week. I wasn't busy or doing anything special or spectacular, I was just being a blog bum. At least that what K called me when I told her I hadn't posted yet and wasn't motivated to do so.

I was kind of blah yesterday. In the morning the kids were fighting (nothing new), in the afternoon they were forced to either nap or play quietly in separate rooms. Everyone but Aidan was okay with this and after she threw a fit she no longer had a choice, nap it was. I had a peaceful hour and a half after that, it was nice. I had no TV on I just sat, browsing Etsy. When Delilah woke up I woke everyone else up, don't want them sleeping past 3pm, then they won't want to go to bed. I had them all shower, since we hadn't been out of our jammies yet, bad mommy, I know :P Shortly after that Jason, Rosy, and Alan showed up. Jason was watching the kids while we went to the store to get stuff for Alan's party tomorrow.

After they left I fed my kids since it was 6:30pm and they usually eat at 5pm. They played nicely after that so I allowed Aidan and Sophia to stay up until 8pm (7pm is usually their bedtime). Delilah took a nap from 7-8:15pm when I woke her up. She seems to sleep in later if I give her an evening nap and let her stay up until 9:30pm. Yesterday she slept until 7:45am and today she slept until 8am :) I spent the rest of the evening talking to Kale or K on the phone and Jason or Rosy online, while watching TV and browsing Etsy.

Today I am taking Lilly and Aidan to meet their teachers and drop their school crap off. Then Patience is hoping to come take them swimming, it hasn't worked out any other day i.e. rain, she got stuck at work, and she had to work at her second job. So hopefully nothing will happen today and they will be able to go. We purposely didn't tell the children in case something happened and she couldn't do it. They haven't known all along her plans, it will be a happy surprise if/when it happens.

Rosy's parents and brother get in today, they came for his first birthday. And the new exchange students come in today. Stella from Germany and Meme from Thailand, hopefully they will at least be HALF as fun as Lele and Nais. It should be interesting, their first weekend with us will be a busy one. Alan's first birthday party is tomorrow. And sometime this weekend I have to exchange Aidan's dress for a smaller size. Other than that I will be watching the hours tick away excitedly until Monday 8am, when they GO BACK TO SCHOOL!

He's there and getting settled in...

He finally called today at 5pm, it's a good thing I was busy all day or I would have worried more. He's living in a house with 5 other guys but 2 are moving out soon. He knows 2 of them and 2 of his neighbors. They already have cable/internet/phone so that is less we have to worry about. He bought at calling card for $20 and has 260 mins on it. I am sure he will call us everyday. The three older girls talked to him and his mother.

We spent the morning being lazy, Delilah woke me up at 6:30am I was not pleased. Tomorrow Judy is getting up with her so I can sleep. After breakfast I took Aidan to get her new glasses fitted. They fit much better than her old pair and are silver instead of blue. After that I passed out snoring on the couch until it was time to go to my mom's for lunch. After lunch we headed to the mall, stopping on the way to check out gun safes for father's day. Man are they expensive. We walked the mall for a couple of hours then had dinner at Mongolian BBQ, Lele's choice for her last dinner here. She leaves tomorrow afternoon. After dinner we went to Dairy Queen. Delilah is a piggy, she loves ice cream. Last week my parents took them there when we were at Worlds of Fun and my dad bought her and Alan their own ice cream cup. Delilah wanted to eat all of hers and yelled when it wasn't being shoveled in. Alan ate some but didn't care. My mom had to stop my dad from feeding it all to her, thankfully. She cried a lot tonight between bites. Hopefully she won't wake up with a tummy ache.

Tomorrow will be spent packing and going to the airport to say goodbye, again. I hate saying goodbye, these past few weeks have sucked.

Teeth

My poor Lilly, she looks like a jack-o-lantern. She is missing 4 out of 8 front teeth and one of her grown up teeth is growing in overtop of the baby one. Bizarre I know. The dentist has given her until tomorrow to get it out, she's had three weeks and it's still there. She is not a normal child. Normal children wiggle the tooth until it falls out, at the first sign of any give in the tooth. This tooth has been wiggly for a year and it's still freaking in there. I don't really want to pay 60% of whatever it costs to have the damn thing yanked. She really needs to get it out of there.

The worst part is (and I know I am a horrible mother for bringing it up) that she has such a goofy looking smile right now. I want to tell her not to smile showing teeth for her school picture on the 28th. But I know that might hurt her feelings. I say might because she is not easily offended. She is really rather thick-skinned. So I will keep my big trap shut, look back at the picture in 10-15 yrs, and laugh my ass off with her.

P.S. My mom calls her Hillbilly Lilly.

Nephew Update: Alan is now 20lbs 13ozs, 26 3/4 inches. He just turned 6mths Monday.

My nephew the HULK

My nephew, the one and only child of my one and only sibling, is freaking huge. Not fat by any means, just a giant of a baby. My kids call him "King Kong of the Babies". He is exactly 3 weeks older than my Delilah and they are only an inch apart in height. But weight, they are worlds apart. He weighed 19lbs 4ozs LAST month, we will find out his current weight in a week. Delilah was 13lbs 2ozs last month, she is in the 50th percentile, Alan is in the 98th.

So imagine this big guy and his poor, tiny mommy. She is about 5'7" and weighs barely 110lbs, she is so tall and skinny. And very very weak. I am short only 5 feet and fat, but strong I was very active and athletic in high school. She can't carry him in the carseat, so when we went shopping today that task fell on me. She could barely carry my daughter in her carseat or even just lift her sons carseat into the car. I am exhusted tonight. I suggested maybe they get a full size carseat that rear faces and a coat for him, so she can just carry him in and out. And much to my suprise she actually took my advice for the second time in a week. The first time she took my advice she was still standing and holding him to get him to go to sleep and I told her to just let him cry a little, he will eventually learn how to fall asleep in his crib alone. She IM'd me all excited a couple days later about how great it was that she can just lay him in the crib and he goes to sleep alone. I keep telling them I know what I am talking about, but only when I am asked for my opinion. I mean I do have FOUR children after all.