Blessed

I just felt the need to express how blessed I feel to be surrounded by such wonderful people. I'm not even sure they know the effect they have on me and my family. I love how our children all so easily get along. I love that as we adults sit and play a game we look over to see all of our children sitting there on the floor playing games too. Boys, girls, younger kids and older kids...they ALL get along! Or even how we can sit and be talking and amongst all the craziness we can hear our children giggling form the other room. It makes everything all worth it and it makes me proud to live here around all these wonderful people.

Today, life is good.

Normal

If you were to come into my home while I am in the shower you most likely will see at least one of my children kicking, banging, and screaming at my bedroom door. This happens every time I get in the shower. Mostly during the week. I spend my mornings out with the kids getting them breakfast, making thier sandwiches, making sure they're dressed, hair fixed, etc. I do this so by the time I get in the shower they are practically ready for school. Never fails, they ABSOLUTELY HAVE something to tell me just as soon as I jump in the shower! This morning my one child, whom it's like pulling teeth to get ready for school, was pounding, kicking and screaming at my door. I'm yelling form inside, "I'm in the shower. I'll be done in a minute." (As if he can hear me) Anyway, I hurry through the shower, wrap myself in a towel and open my door. This is what he had to tell me, "I'm ready for school, mom." How do you get upset at that??? I was so grateful that fo rthe first time all year he was ready 45 min. before school started!

I'm just wondering if this is the norm in everyone's house and if this is ine of those things that I will NOT miss? You know, like the pee around the toilets, the little "prizes" you find under beds, in closets and anywhere that you can stash something, and the homework!

SO today I love my job as a mom and I'm grateful I have the privilege of being a mom. I love all my children and today in particular, I'm glad they were ready for school early!

P.S. I'm hoping to post pictures from the last post, but I'm having internet problems on the computer that has all my pictures :(

We LOVE visitors!

We love having people come visit us, especially when it is Mimi and Papa Ben. They came out to see us for our last week off school. We did so many things and the kids had a blast! We went to the Discovery Science Center, snow sledding, the beach, a farmer's market (mom and dad's favorite!), the park, out to dinner with even more family, played games, put puzzles together and just hung out at home. We have all kinds of pictures from our many events.

The kids had a blast at the Disc. Science Center. We went a few years ago and they have just een begging to go back. If you have never been I STRONGLY urge you to go. We could have spent all day there building, exploring and discovering the hows and whys to science. Some of the highlights were building space craft with legos, locking them all in a wind tunnel, playing ice hockey and learning about space shuttles.

Snow sledding was a blast. We bundled the kids all up in snow gear, were armed with hot chocolate and off we went. I thought Eli and Matthew would be nervous about the hills...I was wrong. One time down with and adult and they wanted to do it all on their own! We had only one casualty and that was me and Spencer. Really I was the only one with lasting bruises so not to shabby!

We spent a day down at the beach doing many fun things. We went to a farmer's market and got some really yummy fruit. I was in awe of all the things they had and at how many markets we had to choose from. Isle after isle of fresh fruit and veggies. Do these people know how lucky they are to have it all so accesible to them? We had lunch and then off to 1,000 steps beach. Really it had only 253, but who's counting when you're going down??? Up was a whole nother story. Lots of little legs climbing a VERY steep 253 stairs. We made it ranging from 1min.30sec.- 4min.52sec. Whew, my legs are hurting thinking about it again! While at this beach we met a man who had lived there the past 30 years. He gave us some history of the houses and helped Allison find sand crabs. He also told us the record for climbing those stairs was 32 seconds!!! You need to go climb those stairs to appreciate that time! After that we were off to find a good spot for sunset pictures. Beautiful! Then dinner with the whole family. It is so fun to see everyone and catch up.

The kids enjoyed putting many jigsaw puzzles together and playing games with everyone. Our favorite for the moment is headbandz. I just like to sit back and look at everyone with a card stuck on their head trying to guess what it is.

We do have on tradition that we have been trying to shake when Mimi and Papa come to visit. Someone ALWAYS gets sick! It started with Matthew and went through them all. They had high fevers, headaches, body aches and bad colds. I do have to say that it was so nice to have 2 extra sets of hands waking up at night giving kids medicine and to check on them. I do think I got a little spoiled. It has been a little hard to adjust to not having them here. BUT, we get to look forward to seeing them in August!!! Maybe I should pump the kids full of vitamin c and everything else that can keep them healthy for the first time ever whole they are here!

Papa and Mimi, we miss you and can't wait to see you again!

New Year's resolutions

The best thing about a new year is your resolutions. I'm not going to tell you all of them, but one of them is to regularly update my blog. Well, at least to NEVER get so far behind again. I LOVE having my blog and I LOVE to look back and read all about my family. I'm sad that I let life get a hold of me last year. It's easy to say this now because my kids are on "winter" vacation for another week. When we go back to school it's 3 kids to all day school, 1 to kindergarten, and 1 to preschool. For me it's work 3 days a week, at preschool, and in class rooms all the days in between. Somewhere in all that I try to get laundry done and house cleaned. The homework thing has just been KILLING me. What am I to do with all 5 in school next year??? Homework for 5 kids...YUCK! Anyway, I love teaching preschool. It's a fun thing for me to do and I get to spend it with my little guy. In all of life we still are trying to balance activity days, cub scouts, golf (it's year round), dance, and baseball that will be starting here soon. I'm telling you all this because I failed to document it all last year. Maybe I will have to randomly post pictures of things last year too.

Ok on to Christmas and New Years. This year Christmas Eve was the same as always. We spend it with grandma Nana. We go to the movies, we saw Tangled, go back to her house eat dinner, sing carols, act out the Christmas story, have a visit with santa and open presents. The kids LOVE getting their new jammies every year! (Well, so does mommy) After all that we load up and go home to prepare for the BIG man to come down the chimney and bring us lots of goodies. Christmas morning for the first time in years was just us. It was VERY quiet. You see my kids don't shout with excitement when they open that present that they had been dying for. They just smile and say thanks. Me on the other hand, I sit there on the edge of my seat so excited for them to open it and to see their reaction. I can hardly stand it! It is tradition that we block off the hallway so they can not see the presents under the tree until everyone is ready to come out.




Here they all are waiting, waiting, waiting for dad to get out of the shower. Really come on dad, we don't care how you look just come out so we can OPEN presents! (He does this every year. He has to shower and be dressed before we open presents...lame, I know, but how can you be upset when he has good hygene?)


Here they are when they finally got to come around the corner! Seriously that is the most excitement I think we've ever had! I love how I got Zach in mid air!


Here is yet another tradition. I think last year I actually posted video of this. So, after they have seen all the presents they have to sit and listen to the story of Christ and His birth. Never mind that we acted it out the night before. I think Craig just likes to torcher them as much as possible ;)

Among some of our favorite gifts we got DS's, clothes, books, lego sets, shoes, baseball stuff, clocks, a kindle and a bosch :)

After our yummy breakfast we got cleaned up, played and rested. We then had a yummy dinner of stuffed beef tenderloin, parmesan mashed potatoes, asparagus and salad. For dessert we had a super yummy caramel cheesecake and brownies. We enjoyed that dinner with one of my brothers, his wife and daughter and her mom, my dad and sister.

Now for our New years celebration. Every year we spend this holiday with our friends. We trade off houses. This year we were off to their house. We get a sitter for all 10 kids and we go have a nice quiet dinner with just the 4 of us. We come home to attempt put them all down and we play games. Then it was off to bed just after midnight because we had an early morning planned. We got up and took all the kids to the rose parade. How fun was that! We were soooo cold, but it was worth it.


Here are some of our monkeys in a tree by our friends, uncle's mom's house. Here are some pics form the parade.


Me and my little guy bundled up.

Me and my big guy :)



Enjoying all the hot chocolate! We sure needed it to warm the insides of our bodies!




Look at the freckles across M's face. So cute!

I guess every year they have a war with the people that sit across the street. When I say every year I mean that this has been going on for at least 10 years they said. Whenever there is a break in the parade, one side will get up a spray silly string on the other side and visa versa. The kids thought they had died and gone to heaven. Why is that you ask? Because it was adults that have this war NOT the kids!

I guess you could say they got him good!

After the parade we go back to the house and have lunch. After that has settled we took the kids to the park down the street and let them go. They ran and enjoyed a fun game of soccer that everyone played. It was such a wonderful day and I feel so lucky to have been able to have this experience with my kids. Who knows, this may become a tradition for us. We know that the seats are there. They have been sitting in the same spot for over 50 years! Can you believe it??? Not only that, but they mark off their section just before halloween! Yes you read that right, halloween! Thank you to them for letting us share such a fun day and here's to a new year and a few resolutions!