So busy

Ok, so we've been rather busy. We moved on the 13th and then right after that Chris had a business trip he had to go to and was gone for most of the week following the move. That was lame. Chris got home and now we've been in this new house for just over a week. It's been so busy.

Funny thing that Derrick said the other day - I asked him if he wanted a grilled cheese sandwich. He said, "No, I want a boy cheese sandwich."

Not ready to fly solo

Do you remember that old movie Better Off Dead? Remember the mother was a truly terrible cook? Remember the green slime pudding that crawled off the plate? Dana concocted something similarly creepy last night. I was helping Chris with his class and I wanted Dana to make popcorn and watch a movie with the little ones. But we were out of popcorn. So I told her to make cookies. She's done it before, but always with supervision. I thought she was ready. She wasn't. We knew something wasn't right when she came in and told us that Derrick was helping her mix them up and he had stirred it too much. Chris and I look at each other, not sure how you stir cookie dough too much. We told her to take care of it because we had to focus on his class. Then right after we finish, she brings in what I find out to be the second batch of cookie dough. She asks, "Does this look right?" This is what reminded us of the scene in the movie when the pudding crawls off the plate. Talk about slimy looking mess - whoa!! It was the consistency of snot with chocolate chips dispersed throughout. I go into the kitchen to find the first batch and it's looking like brownie batter. I find measuring cups with melted butter in them and realize she has forgotten what it means to "cream" the butter and sugar together. She has melted the butter. That in turn melted the chocolate chips in the first batch, which she then abandoned to make the second batch. I ask her how much of different ingredients she has put in. She's gotten everything right except for the flour. The recipe called for 2 and 1/4 cups plus 1/2 cup for elevation. (I had to alter my favorite recipe for our altitude here.) She put in 1/2 cup of flour. I decided that I may as well try to salvage it if the only thing missing was flour. At that point all I'm risking is 4-5 cups of flour, the rest of the ingredients were already a lost cause if I didn't try to save it. So I mixed the two batches together and added flour. Lots of flour. They turned out pretty good - not fabulous like the recipe done right, but pretty darn good for looking like it would crawl off the plate.

Snow...

It snowed here last week. It didn't stick down here but there was snow really low on the mountain. We took the kids up on Saturday to play in the snow. Everyone loved it. Some loved it longer than others.
Emma didn't last very long. One very small snowball in the face and she was done. Everyone else had lots of fun though. We made a small sad little snowman. We just have no experience there. One of the older kids was shocked to find that their butt was wet after sitting down. We really thought they should have figured that out beforehand. It was lots of fun and we look forward to doing it again.

Music lessons

So this year has really been a struggle for Bradley as far as homework is concerned. We've decided he has two speeds when being compelled to do something he doesn't want to do - slow and slower. We've tried several different methods for encouraging him to get it done in a timely manner. None worked all that well. I'm not exaggerating when I say he would spend 7 hours on homework that should take maybe 30 minutes tops. About a week ago he came home from school with one of these -

a recorder.

He asked if he could practice it and I told him he could as soon as his homework was done. He grumbled. But then he got his homework done - quickly. The next day, he didn't say anything when he got home he just sat down and did his homework. He was done in about 20 minutes. That was the first time all year that he had gotten his homework done so quickly. He's done this every night since he brought home the recorder. My friend is the PTO president and she is the one who is teaching the 4th graders to play the recorder. I told her how great it's been for Bradley but I don't know if she can possibly appreciate how ecstatic we are that Bradley is doing his homework like we knew he could.

It's due WHEN!?!?!

So Tuesday morning as I'm driving Calvin to school after his physical therapy appointment I ask him about his science project. I knew the teachers had started talking about it back in December but Calvin would never tell me when it was due. So he says it's due Friday. I know he hasn't done anything on it at home yet, and after a few questions realize he hasn't done anything on it at school either. I ask him what he's going to do. He's got it all figured out it's going to be so easy. He's going to determine if video games will turn your brain to mush or not. He says it will only take a day or so to do. I explain that since he cannot cut anyone's heads open to actually look at their brains he cannot do that project. He agrees that I'm right. Then he changes his idea to whether video games make you smarter. He assures me this will also be easy and will only take a day. I tell him he needs to talk to Dad about that one. Later at dinner Chris asks him about his science project and that's when Calvin says that the presentation is due tomorrow. We're so mad. We explain that the due date can't be Friday and Wednesday at the same time. After quite a bit of "discussion" (lecturing from Chris - and I was in trouble too because it was written in his homework folder which I had not been checking. I hate those things. ) I help Calvin with a completely new idea. Is 6 a lucky number? He's rolling dice and writing down data and then I help him organize his thoughts and data into a presentable project. I have to say it looked rather nice for last minute. We have him give us a mock presentation so that he's practiced for the next day at school. So now skip ahead to the next day after school -

"Calvin, how did your presentation go?"

"We didn't have it."

"Did you ask the teacher when it was due?"

"No." Pause. "Maybe it's due tomorrow."

We had the same conversation the next day. And then a similar one on Friday in which he told me the teacher said it was due on Monday. Um, there's no school on Monday. We're pretty sure that he turned it in really early because if he had turned it in really late, the teacher would've made some sort of contact with us - right?

Quick Catch-Up

So it's been awhile since a real post and I think if I don't do a quick catch-up I'll just keep putting off posting.

We had a great Christmas. This was the first year that we didn't spend Christmas Eve with family. We just had our own little family at home. It was rather refreshing. I kept worrying all month about not doing something with family. I felt that it wouldn't really be Christmas if we didn't spend it with either Chris' side or my side of the family. But all that worry was for naught.

We had a nice dinner at home with the kids. We had a Christmas goose, spinach casserole, sweet potatoes baked with butter, fancy rice, homemade rolls, and salad. Everyone really liked the goose. I was worried - kind of risky making something you've never tried before but I trusted Alton Brown and he did not fail me.

We had the kids make Santa scopes and tracked his movements on Norad. That was fun. We then read a book about believing in Santa with the kids and it explained the symbolism of Santa with the true meaning of Christmas. I had made PJ pants for everyone - including Chris - and gave them to everyone that night. (I found John Deere tractor flannel for Chris - it's awesome! He said he hasn't had tractor PJs since he was five.) We sang Christmas songs and all the kids actually sang. I'm looking forward to our new tradition of having Christmas Eve at home.

Christmas Day was really great. We had a really nice relaxed morning. I had made cinnamon rolls for breakfast the day before. After we opened presents, Chris took a nap for a couple hours while I got food ready to take to my parent's house. We ended up leaving about an hour and a half late for my parents, but there were others who were later and so dinner was postponed anyways. We stayed the night at my parents and had a great day the next day with all my sisters and their families. My brother wasn't there this year because his wife's brother was getting married. We all missed his family.

New Years Eve was again at home with the kids. We let the little ones stay up until almost 11:00 which is unthinkably late for them. The three older kids got to stay up until the new year. I actually fell asleep on the couch the last half hour and woke up grumpy when they were ringing in the new year. My bad. We sent the three older kids to bed then and Chris and I watched a little TV. Around 1:30 we went to bed and I asked who was going to get up with the kids in the morning. Chris said they would sleep in because they had been up so very late. Didn't work. I got up with the kids.

We drove to Chris' sister's house for the annual monopoly game the next day. Before we left we were cleaning the house and I was working in the play room. I wasn't picking up anything heavy but I hurt my low back and it has yet to fully recover. It's been getting a little bit better every day, but is still sore. So my participation in the monopoly game was minimal. I spent most of the evening laying on the floor. We stayed the night at her house and then spent the next day at his other sister's house and then spent the night at my sister's house and went to the baby blessing on Sunday. Everyone commented on us being on time to the blessing. Apparently that's what it takes for us to be on time to a baby blessing, stay the night before with the family blessing their baby. All in all it was a great weekend. We got to spend time with a lot of the family and it was fun.

For the most part now, the kids have adjusted to going back to school. Laundry is mostly caught up - ok I'm swimming in clean clothes, but at least they're clean. The kids have all been passing around a mild cold/flu for the past week. I think we're mostly done with it now though. I've been making my sister-in-law's wedding dress. It's all cut out and needs to be put together now. We're thinking about moving. And I want to start homeschooling the kids. More posts to come...

I'm back...

So Chris and I decided that the blog no longer needed to be private. I like that the sidebar of my blog tells me when my friends and family have updated theirs and I knew that it bothered some of you when I went private. So sorry, it was unavoidable at the time. But now, I'm happy to announce that the blog is open again to the public. Happy day.

Oh and by the way, to have your sidebar show the updates, you have to remove me from your list and add me back in.

Do they even know what it tastes like?

I've come to the realization that my children have most likely never tasted a Snickers or a Butterfingers candy bar. Maybe the older ones have at school or something, but none of them have tasted them from the Halloween candy. Every year I pick out the Snickers and Butterfingers and I'm embarrassed to say, I do not share.

Chris said he would take the extra candy to work on Monday after Halloween so that it wouldn't be sitting here at the house tempting me or sugaring up the kids for too long. He kept forgetting to take it and I kept eating it so yesterday I threw it all away. Did I confess to the children? No. I blamed their dad. I told the kids that Chris had taken it to work. It's for the best - right?

Halloween

I went on a total sewing binge two weeks before Halloween. Chris and I were invited to a costume party on the weekend before Halloween.

We were Betty and Barney Rubble, and we had a great time at the party!! The kids weren't invited so they didn't need costumes yet, so I didn't even think about what to make for them until after the party.

My sister showed me a blog with a tutorial for the cutest Tinkerbell and Peter Pan costumes. I showed that to Emma and Derrick and they were sold. They went together really quickly and looked adorable.

Dana wanted to be Asoka (Star Wars: Clone Wars - Anakin's padawan) but I wasn't willing to buy it online, too pricey. So we looked at pictures of patterns online and she picked out Cleopatra. Calvin wanted to be Anakin Skywalker and Bradley wanted to be Luke Skywalker, wearing all black. So while I was looking online for Dana's pattern I showed the boys some patterns I thought would work for their costumes too. I went to Tucson to go to JoAnns and get all the fabric and patterns I would need for all five costumes Saturday - yes one week before Halloween. Of course all the patterns I wanted were sold out. Just about all costume patterns were sold out. No worries, I'll make it up as I go. I guessed on how much fabric I would need and off I went. I made Tinkerbell and Peter Pan first and as I said, they went together pretty quickly. I was done with those by Tuesday. Then I took a day off from sewing. Then I made Dana, Bradley and Calvin's costumes. I realized Thursday night as I'm trying to get all three done so they could wear them to school on Friday that I made the costumes in the wrong order. But they all got done and looked pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. :-)

What a bunch of goofballs!!

Anakin using the force "You will give me candy!"

Luke using the force to compel the giving of treats.

Cleopatra's pose :-)

Euphoria!!!

The kids had a great time trick-or-treating and came home with quite the loot.

Happy Birthday Boys!!

I totally suck at remembering that I have a camera. Sorry no action shots of candles being blown out or presents being opened.

Bradley turned 10 this year and he started talking about his party six months ago. Out of the blue one day he says to me, "I'm going to invite Kaulin to my birthday party." I tell him his birthday is not for another six months and he says, "I know." Funny. So about two weeks before his party I ask if there's anyone else he'd like to invite to his party and he says he wants to invite Kaulin's whole family. That's it. No other kids. Bradley got Rock Band and books for his birthday. I think truth be told he likes the books better. Rock Band has turned out to be a great family activity for all of us though. So much fun!!

Derrick turned three this year and it's so much easier to shop for the little ones than the big ones. He's been really into his GeoTrax train lately so I started looking to get him some of those. Walmart has stopped carrying them so I looked online. HOLY COW are they pricey!! I then looked on Craigslist and found a bunch for a fraction of the cost. The hard part was keeping them hidden until his birthday. We did pretty good for about two weeks but he found them the day Chris and I left to go to Florida for my cousin's wedding. I told him they were for someone else but he didn't believe me. Every so often he would tell me they were there and that they were for him. When we did finally have his birthday party I wrapped them up as best I could with a shortage of wrapping paper (I got creative with four different types of wrapping paper) and we headed off to Grandma's house. He took one look at the box and said "My trains." Stinker!!

Everglades

Here we are on the beach - so fun!!

Yes, two alligators.

One of the things we did in Florida that I forgot about in the last post about it was an airboat tour of the Everglades. Way cool!! We saw alligators. :-)

Labor Day

Last year we went camping during the summer up on Mt. Graham. We had my sister's camper and it was quite comfortable!! We had a great time - except for Derrick constantly trying to take a running leap from the side of the mountain. Every two minutes it was was "Where is Derrick? There he is, go grab him!" If we'd had a leash for him we would have happily used it. I was ready to make that our last camping trip ever. It was just too stressful having to keep such a close eye on Derrick. This year we decided to give it another try. Derrick is a little older and so much better at staying with us. We went up to Luna, NM. It's about a five hour drive for us but worth every minute of it. (By the way, it's about five hours from the valley as well.) It's beautiful and we had a great time. We took our ATV which really makes for a fun trip! We have no pictures of the trip at all. Chris gave Dana the camera to put in the van. I put the video camera in the van. When we got up there, the video camera was dead and Dana couldn't remember where she put the camera and we didn't find it until we got home. It was in the van the whole time. Very frustrating. We had a great time though and are definitely going camping there again.

Ft Lauderdale

Chris and I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Ft Lauderdale last month. Work was paying for Chris and I tagged along and we had the most amazing vacation since New York seven years ago. We spent time on the beach, ate out at really nice places and got to go sport fishing. It was sea turtle nesting season so there were all these nest sites marked out on the beach. We went out to the beach one night hoping to see either a momma sea turtle coming to shore or a nest of babies hatching. We saw neither. But we enjoyed our late night beach stroll. When we went sport fishing, the dock was really slow so we got a great deal - or at least that's what the guy told us - on our fishing trip. There was no one else wanting to go so Chris and I had the boat and two man crew to ourselves. It was an awesome fishing trip. I didn't have to bait any hooks or touch any fish. It was quite exciting to reel in the fish. Of course our camera had a dead battery that day so we bought a disposable camera at the dock lest we be accused of telling fish stories about our catches. Here's a few pictures from our trip. Most of the other pictures are on the home network which I'm not sure how to access yet. I wasn't paying that close of attention when Chris explained it to me. Oops - my bad.

I don't think we could support our family with our skills as fishermen, but it was a lot of fun!

This was taken in Key Largo.

Someone told Chris that Ft Lauderdale was only an hour away from the Keys. Boy did we get lied to on that one. It's two hours from Ft Lauderdale to Key Largo and then another two hours from there to Key West. It's a beautiful drive but we were expecting sandy beaches and it's not sandy beaches at all. It's jungle islands with the jungle practically growing right out of the ocean. It was really late and with less than 20 miles to Key West we had to turn back. It was our last night there and we still needed to pack to catch our morning flight home. It was a lovely drive but had we known what it was, we wouldnt've done it.

Oh and about the humidity - holy cow. It felt like someone threw a hot wet blanket over you every time you stepped out the door. My sunglasses would immediately fog up - even if I didn't have them on.

This was the perfect vacation for us. Chris had his convention thing that he had to go to and so I had loads of time to sleep in and read to my hearts content. It was lovely!! My only goal every day was to be out of bed and decently dressed before housekeeping showed up. I got to meet some of the people Chris works with and one of them brought his wife too. We had lots of fun hanging out and I hope to see them again soon.

A couple of political videos for your viewing pleasure...

Not sure which one of these videos I like better. So sad that these are true.

So forlorn

It starts raining about 10 minutes before Dana and Bradley's bus brings them home. It's raining pretty hard and I'm thinking maybe I should go walk down there with an umbrella to get the kids. But I'm also thinking it's just water, they're big kids, they'll be fine. So I see the bus go by and I know they're walking home now. Right then, the rain starts really come down hard. For a brief moment I can't see the house right across the street. Ok, I need to walk down and meet the kids with the umbrella. I tell the two little ones to stay in the house and I'll be right back. They look rather worried but say ok. Then I head out. I don't see Dana and Bradley on the sidewalk and I have a clear view all the way to the bus stop now. I'm a little worried, where are they? They're under a tree. They're soaked to the bone. And, they're crying. Poor little things. I get to them and reassure them it's only water. Bradley says "it stings like electricity."

Can you see the water pooled up under the eaves of the house? How about the river flowing under my van? What you cannot see are the rapids flowing in the street just around the corner of the house. Tons of water.

Time flies

Is it just me or is time going faster the older that I get? Quick catch up since last post - Chris came home - happy day!! A few days left of summer - not much happened. Dad got the ok from his doctor to only wear his neck brace as needed for comfort - neck is healing well. Amazing what doctors can do. My sister's baby, Marshall, was blessed - another baby blessing that we were late for. We do not have a very good track record for making it on time, but it was really nice to see everyone who made it. The kids started school. Calvin is in junior high now. He was late to all of his classes the first day because he couldn't get his locker open. But he figured it out on the second day of school. Bradley is in the same class as his best friend, Kaulin - happy day! Dana is so happy to see all her friends again. She was socially starved all summer. Emma and Derrick are settling into a routine again with naps - hallelujah!!

Oh and by the way, Chris and I are part of the "angry mob."

Too scary to sleep

So have you ever stayed up late watching a scary movie and then decided that you can't possibly go to sleep after watching it? You have to then watch something else to calm your mind so that peaceful sleep is possible. Well, last night I was going to go to bed early - at least earlier than 3:00 AM. I sent the kids to bed around 8:30 and then started reading my book. Around 10:00 the book starts to get scary. I had no choice but to finish the book or have troubled sleep. I finished the book around 3:00 AM.

So tired...

I'm really quite tired. Chris has been out of town since Sunday. I don't sleep well without him. I just can't hardly bring myself to go to bed alone. I look at it this way. I go to bed on time and I lay there for about 30 minutes feeling lonely waiting for myself to fall asleep, or I stay up really late being entertained by a movie or a good book and then when I'm exhausted I fall asleep quickly. Hmm, lonely -vs- entertainment. Not really a tough choice. The only problem with that is the little ones missed the memo about me sleeping in. I figure with me going to bed late and Derrick getting up early, I'm averaging about 5 hours of sleep a night. When I was in college that would have been a lot of sleep. Not so much anymore. My eyes are dry and scratchy and I find myself unable to focus. I'm so glad Chris will be home tomorrow night. Clearly I don't function well without him.

Dana's beau

So the other day Dana tells me rather out of the blue that Brian doesn't like her anymore. (Brian is the boy who gave her a teddy bear for Valentine's Day. Refer back to February posts for whole story.) I asked her why and she replied that she didn't know, but that it seemed to be after she told Brian that she loved William that Brian stopped liking her. She didn't seem upset about it, but also didn't seem to understand why Brian would be bothered by that. Imagine that, being bothered because the one you love, loves another. Dana has yet to experience that. She quite confident in William's undying love towards her.

Cookie dough

I have a real weakness for cookie dough. I didn't always have this weakness. I used to think it was disgusting to eat raw cookie dough. I can't remember which pregnancy enlightened me to the joys of raw cookie dough, but it was during one them that I began enjoying eating it raw. A lot of tastes change during pregnancy. They usually go back to normal a few months after having the baby. Cookie dough however has stayed with me. I knew when I planned on making bake sale item for my brother-in-law's fundraiser that I would be going off diet that day. One day here and there is not a big deal. What I did not plan on was that four batches of cookie dough would fail because I was not used to high altitude baking. You see, I know that I have a weakness and I avoid it. My poor children almost never get to have cookies because I'm not very good at sharing them when I make them. So I don't make them - ever. Since I never make them, even though it's been months since we've moved to Sierra Vista, I didn't realize that I needed to adjust my recipes for high altitude. Maybe you're wondering why I'm such an idiot that it took four batches to figure that out? Well, I made a double batch first. The first pan didn't look right coming out of the oven so I thought I'd chill that batch of dough before baking any more of them. And then since I had all the ingredients out I made another double batch to chill as well and planned on baking them all later on. It didn't occur to me that I would need to adjust for elevation. I've never made cookies anywhere but in Queen Creek/Gilbert/Mesa area. So after many pans of cookies continued to fail to produce something that was sturdy enough to handle transport and sale, I turned to the internet. Sure enough, altitude is my problem. The rest of the cookie dough went into the fridge to sit while I mixed up more (adjusted recipe of course). These new cookies turned out great. However, I'm left with quite a bit of unbake-able cookie dough in my fridge. I even took it with me just now when I dropped Chris off at the airport in Tucson hoping to give it to my sister who lives in Tucson (the dough should be fine for Tucson's elevation). She wasn't home. She's in Pima at my parents' house. So I had to bring my cookie dough back home with me. I fear diet is in jeopardy.