Daddy, Germs and Birthdays

None of those are particularly related, they are just things that have taken precedence in our lives the last few days! We are oh-so-glad to have Daddy home! He got back Sunday afternoon, just in time for Berea to come down with a fever which lasted through Tuesday night (which means we haven't been getting much sleep!). This is how she looked all day Tuesday, poor thing. Now Christian and I are fighting off colds of some sort...

But I digress. Christian took work off Monday, so we took off a day of school and celebrated "Daddy Day", which consisted of going over to Grandma's house and hanging out, lunch and playtime at Del Taco, and Peter getting a birthday present for Anne at Walmart. It was nice and relaxing and just fun being a family. Then we had Anne's birthday- I still can't believe she's six! She got to invite a friend and then all her family and family-like friends (she still calls her family her "friends" incidentally- which I think is great).

 The amazing ladybug cake

 I gave Anne this African outfit that I got when I was little- I think it fits her better than it ever fit me. :)

 Berea enjoying the ginormous gift bag from Auntie Grace and Uncle Andy

 The amazing ladybug looks a little creepy in candlelight

 

Anne and Emerald

Day 12

The final day of my posting every single day! Christian should be home tomorrow early afternoon. I got some time to clean up today after taking the kids to Grandma's house (oh how happy we are that they are back!). It was a good time to work and pray out my frustrations of the morning's arguments with one of the kids. The whole day started out wrong with miscommunications and impatience and anger and all that nasty stuff, on both sides. We had made up by the time we left our house, but that nagging feeling of guilt still lingered well into the afternoon. Working and listening to and singing along with some good songs helped me get me back into a more prayerful attitude of recognizing my guilt and Christ's forgiveness. Anyway, no pictures to show for the day- just a cut finger and bum back from the trampoline a couple days ago. Oy vey. At least it was fun. :)

Day 11

TGIF! I'm starting to get rather giddy with excitement about Christian coming home day after tomorrow. And still trying to make it through these next couple days with my sanity intact (my middle child would take the persistent widow in the New Testament to task pretty easily)! But I did take two pictures today and Peter took the picture of Tirzah in the bath.

 The kids started off the day by pulling all sorts of crud out from under my oven, including old match box cars and bouncy balls, one of which has already found its way behind the washing machine in the bathroom.

 Can you guess which one woke up at 5:30 and which one slept in till 6:00?

 Anybody have any products they recommend for keeping little people from sliding around in bathtubs? We had a plastic/rubber mat that we had since before Peter was born, but it had been forming a nasty habit of growing mold ( in between times of washing it) and was smelly, so I just threw it away. And of course these girls can't just still for longer than 5 seconds... :)

Day 10

Not much to write home about today. I somewhat neglected the kids in order to finish making dresses for the girls out of some fabric that used to be my grandma's. They turned out really cute, although too big for them at this point. Hopefully they'll fit before next summer! I'll try to take a picture when I'm feeling a bit less apathetic about things. :) And that's about all the excitement for today.

Day 9

Gasp! I just realized that Christian gets back on day 13, not day 12. I'm going to try not to think about that. Ok. As I was going to say, happy first day of Fall! We celebrated by ordering cool, rainy weather (thanks, God!), visiting with an old friend over some tea, eventually doing school and chores, making a blitz run to Safeway, going to birthday festivities for my brother in law and mother in law, and turning the temperature dial into the red zone on the way home! Oh yes. And I made banana bread. I thought it was gross- really mushy- but the kids like it. More power to them. Quote of the day...Peter, reading from the Bible story book: "Jacob had 12 sons and lived in Canada." :) Easy mistake. Following are some pictures Christian e-mailed of some places he's been so far...

Day 8

Our excitement of the day was taking a trip to Walmart. Of course I completely forgot to get the main thing we were going there for. My swell brother will save the day and get it tomorrow for me- yay for not having to drag five kids in to Walmart two days in a row! And of course as soon as we were done shopping, pretty much all three big kids decided they had to go to the bathroom really bad. So we made a quick detour and stopped at a friend's house for a quick potty break. And she's planning on bringing her kids over tomorrow, so that'll be more excitement! :) Anyhoo, here are the pictures from yesterday...

Early morning snuggles

Waiting for breakfast

Sporting Daddy's tour guide hat that he never wears...

Taking a turn about the kitchen- their pony tails kinda remind me of those flags they stick on bumper cars...

Day 7

Hmm. I'm officially tired of this. Even though we had a great day as far as attitudes (at least the two oldest kids), and I got laundry done, and canned ketchup and tomatoes, remembered to water the garden (and remembered to turn off the water!), resisted the urge to eat chocolate or ice cream, exercised a bit, did school with the kids, didn't lose my temper, and got a couple cute pictures of the kids, I'm just worn out. I want to go to bed and wake up in the morning and Christian be there. No call from him tonight- I assume no cell phone service. And the babies are being incredibly fitful sleepers. So there's day 7, and 7 too many. :( I'm sure tomorrow things will cheer up a bit.

Day 6- Sunday edition

Things I love about my church (in no specific order):
- I love the exposed wood beams on the ceiling, the cool hanging lights and the stone work.
- I love how our pastor preaches straight through the Word of God and is brave enough to address and not skim over the controversial issues.
- I love how focused our church is on missions.
- I love that we pray for a small group of believers by name in a jail in CA.
- I love the careline ministry I'm a part of that helps out with meals and cleaning, etc. for people with health issues or moms with new babies. (Or in my case when I was still pregnant with the twins!)
- I love that my brother and sister and I all go to the same church.
- I love the children's ministry that does a great job teaching our kids.
- I love it when Christian teaches adult Sunday school (well, that's kind of a toss up, since he's distracted all week before a class... :) )- he's a great teacher.
- I love meeting new people.
- I love getting to know people that I ordinarily wouldn't have any contact with throughout the week- especially the older women. And younger women, for that matter- high school and college girls.
- I love that at least five random people told me yesterday that I could call them if I needed any help during the week while C's gone.
- I love that we have completely different kinds of worship leaders from week to week. A band one week, a choir the next...
- I love Fall/Christmas time when all the craft sale stuff is set up. I love that 100% of the proceeds go to missions, often supporting national missionaries.
- I love that there is always someone expecting a baby at our church. When my twins were born, three other ladies all had babies within a week on either side!
- I love that we don't have to dress "nice" if we don't want to.
- I love that we usually have a few homeless people coming regularly to our church.
I could keep going, but a little one grabbing my leg and smelling rather foul in the lower regions is compelling me to wrap this up. On with the week!
www.fcfonline.org

Day 5- that's it?!

I swear time has slowed WAAAAY down. 12 days is a lot longer than it used to be. The day started out ok, though rather groggily from lack of sleep (partially my fault, partially BOTH twins waking up at 5:30- it's rather difficult to snuggle with two one-year olds at the same time). Got in some garden/tree watering by my lonesome while the kids entertained themselves doing who-knows-what-and-I-don't-really-care inside. The babies were taking their nap by 7:30. Took the kids to Ya Ya's while I got some grocery shopping in. They were out of strawberries and I forgot the blasted juice. Oh well, it was fun hanging out with Ya when I got back, but we had to come home. To a mess. And crabby kids. Pretty much didn't get better till they went to bed, which worked wonders for my morale. I was going to go to bed at a reasonable time, but then thought about starting up the pro-life newsletter for our church again, and the ideas just kept coming and spinning around in my head. So. I've worked some of them out and I think I have enough closure to at least get to sleep. Here's to sleeping kids- and may they wake up nice and late!

Day 4

Woohoo! Two days straight of not losing my temper! Emmanuel, God with us! I know, it's sad that I think it's an amazing thing. But. "When I get up I might fall back down again- we get up anyway..." Anyhoo- good day. The kids finished their first week of organized chores and were awarded books (yay for Target dollar section)- Peter got The Amazing Stories of Dr. Dolittle, Anne got A Little Princess, and Elijah got a book on creepy crawly things like scorpions- which he calls his "Scallywag book". We made an early morning dash to Safeway for some milk and of course came back with ice cream sandwiches. They were mint chocolate chip and on a good sale. I couldn't resist. Though I haven't had one yet. But the kids have enjoyed them! I'm a lot more of a sucker when Christian's gone. :) Good thing it's so hard for me to get out!
I had a great evening having some friends over to watch Meet Me in St. Louis, and to wind down I have taken a melatonin pill which is starting to kick in. So. Peter took control of the camera today, so we have a plethora of pictures for you tonight, which I will download (upload?) and go to bed!

Anne's picture of Noah, his wife and the animals, "after they parked the ark on the mountain."

Some mornings are just like that. ;)

Day 3

Good day overall. Anne's learning how to ride her bike without training wheels- doing great- just gotta work on that steering... :) Played at the mall with Ransom. Elijah informed me, "Little boys OUGHT to be noisy!" Ha! Here are a couple pics of some pretty cute sleeping babies. Speaking of sleeping, I'm checking out. :)

Day 2

I woke up this morning and my digital thermometer said -11! This was quite shocking as I didn't feel cold in the least! Then I remembered my read-out display had gone buggy and actually part of the four was cut off, so it was actually 41 degrees. Much better. After a so-so night's sleep (Tirzah kept me company at various points throughout the night and woke up early, so I didn't have much chance to feel too lonely), our day started out great. Then by late morning I was having anger issues with certain boys complaining and not working and bothering other siblings... Sigh. So after sucking up the pride, apologizing and getting things back on the right track, things started going better again. Peter even got out of taking a Science test, since I hadn't realized the test was for 2 chapters instead of one (new curriculum to me), so we just got to start the next chapter instead! Tirzah actually sat still long enough for me to put to little pony tail/bun thingies in her hair for the first time! Berea didn't have quite the patience. I wish there were barrettes that REALLY didn't fall out. I found some that work fairly well, but when you're fighting against the twins taking out each other's barrettes, and not just their own, it tends to be a losing battle. Then we got to go visit the Vaughans and the Fitts since the Fitts are taking off tomorrow for another 10 months or so in the middle east. More good-byes. :( So we focus on something else- playground at the mall tomorrow with cousin Ransom, Grandma and Grandpa (Young) coming back soon, getting to see Marmie (Vaughan) in four months! Lots of things to look forward to! And I get to watch as much Psych as I want to in the evenings! We don't normally watch anything, we don't get any channels- occasionally we'll put on a Jeeves and Wooster or Sherlock Holmes, or if C's feeling particularly generous maybe a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers. :) So I'll get in a few things that he doesn't care for while he's gone and get it out of my system. Here are a few pictures from today and here's to a good night's sleep!